Whiteout
by notmanos
Summary: (Circa season 5) Bobby sends Sam and Dean after a missing hunter. This takes them to a snowy Colorado town, beset by many supernatural occurrences. Once there, they find a new creature - one that's hunting them for a change.
1. Drown So I Can Watch

_**1 – Drown So I Can Watch**_

Dean really hoped this case was more interesting than it sounded.

To call Three Rivers, Colorado sleepy was probably an insult to Rip Van Winkle. There was no truly central part of town; there was a cluster of shops on what passed for a main street, but most of the residents were spread out on lots varying from a quarter of an acre to several acres. The town sprawled like a drunk on New Year's Eve. Some people had cows and horses. It was so rural, animal shit was probably the town's official smell.

Not that that was obvious now. A half foot of snow blanketed everything in a soft white carpet, and the air just smelled clean and cold, sharp enough to hurt Dean's sinuses. He had to stop about ten miles back, and he and Sam put the chains on the tires, as the road became too icy to risk the Impala.

Bobby had sent them on this one. Apparently there had been a lot of weird portents around the area about a week ago, and a hunter that Dean didn't know named Carter Jenkins came to check it out. And Bobby hadn't heard from him since.

Was this more Lucifer bullshit? Bobby didn't think so at first, but now that was up for grabs. Dean kind of hoped not. He'd had his fill of Lucifer and Michael bullshit. An old fashioned case would be just the thing to take his mind off Apocalypse shit.

Sam was looking at the reports Bobby had sent him on his laptop, and he sighed, running a hand through his hair. "These reports are kind of all over the place. It sounds like there's a haunting at one place, and a possible demon possession at another. And cattle mutilations that sound like werewolves."

"Stranger things have happened than a bunch of monsters showing up in one place at the same time," Dean replied, but even he knew it was bullshit while he was saying it.

"Maybe. It's not really likely though, not in a place this small. A big city, yeah, I'd buy it. Not here."

"Where was Carter's last known location?"

"According to Bobby, he called him from the Dew Drop Inn, the only motel in town. Then he seemed to drop off the face of the Earth."

"Okay. Corny inn it is."

There was a remarkable similarity in everything covered by white. It was pretty, sure, but the silence and lack of people made it almost unbearably eerie. Dean found himself glancing around for footprints, some signs that the whole town wasn't just dead or hibernating. He saw mostly bird tracks.

The inn was situated near the cluster of other shops on the main street – a diner, a hardware store, a drugstore, a dentist's – and the elderly guy running it seemed harmless. Of course, what better cover for a demon? They asked about Carter Jenkins, saying they were friends of his who hoped to meet up here for some "snowmobiling" (where Sam came up with that Dean had no idea, but it sounded appropriately dorky) and all the guy – Gerald – running the place could remember is that he said he was going to check out the Sterling River before he left and never came back. Gerald thought that was funny, because the Sterling was frozen over. They were having the worst and earliest winter they'd had in over a hundred years. Considering the apocalypse was nigh, that made sense.

The inn didn't have rooms with double beds, so Sam and Dean got connecting rooms; in fact, Sam got Carter's room, and they made a beeline for it once Gerald gave them the key. He claimed to have not touched any of the stuff since he checked in and disappeared.

They'd been hoping to find a journal or maybe some notes of what he'd been hunting, but the closest they came to that was some cut out of news articles, with a big question mark written in ink over the headlines. The room was neat, and had never been used, as far as Sam and Dean could tell. His bags were still at the foot of the bed, unpacked. "So we have the hunter equivalent of some guy going out for smokes and never returning?" Dean wondered, checking the closet. Nope, nothing in here but empty hangers. The drawers of the dresser and nightstand held nothing either, except the hotel standard Bible.

"I guess so," Sam said, zipping up the duffle bag he'd been checking. It was just full of hunter stuff: salt, silver, ammo, holy water. "But we have one place we can check out. The Sterling River."

Dean nodded, afraid he was going to say that. Dean looked out the chintzy curtains to see Carter's room had a thrilling view of the iced over back parking lot. How could he leave behind something as glorious as this?

Before they left, Dean called Cass, and left him a message saying where they were. He had no idea what he was doing now on his God search, but since he'd never contacted them and said he found him, they had to assume God wasn't about to save them. Dean honestly never thought that was on the table, but good on Cass for being an angel and yet still that naïve.

The drive out to the Sterling was the same as the drive in: weirdly quiet, empty, kind of pretty. Something in this picturesque scenery seemed to encourage them not to talk much either. Then again, what was there to say? They'd been enjoying an increase in awkward silences since Sam came back from his latest demon blood detox, which came after they got Famine's ring. Sam didn't mention what the blood had done to him, and Dean didn't mention Famine telling he was broken inside as the reason Dean was unaffected by Famine's power. They were both kind of miserable, but it was a quiet misery that couldn't be shared. That was probably for the best. They didn't need to talk about how hopeless they felt. They could feel it, and that was good enough.

Three Rivers was surrounded by forests of evergreens and pine, now dusted with enough snow to look Christmas card perfect. Sterling was one of the namesake three rivers, although it was apparently the smallest (according to Sam). He was trying to figure out why Carter might have been interested in it, but he'd left no mention of that, and the best Sam could scrounge up was there had been animal attack near here that had been attributed to wolves, but was most likely more of the continuing werewolf problem. But there had been attacks near the Frost River and up in the hills too. This place was no more likely than any place else.

There was no shoulder on the dirt back road, but since Dean hadn't seen any traffic either, he didn't care about leaving the Impala parked in the middle of the road. Despite the fact that he was wearing three layers, it was fucking freezing, and out here in the sticks the snow was even deeper. His boots cracked through the icy crust, and the snow came up half way to his knees. He kept his eyes peeled for paw prints, but the only ones he saw were too small for wolves. There was no sign another person had been here, but the snow was fresh as well as thick. He could be walking on Carter's snow swamped corpse right now and never know it. Now there was an unpleasant thought.

Dean made his way down a gentle slope to the river, which was indeed frozen solid. He could see lines in it that indicated that some foolhardy individuals had been ice skating on it, maybe playing a pick up game of hockey. Brave, stupid kids probably, but there probably wasn't a ton of stuff to do in a one horse town like this.

Sam was looking through a grove of trees for … something. Honestly, Dean had no idea what he was looking for. "What are you doing?"

"Looking for claw marks, scratches, some kind of telltale werewolf sign," he said, scooping out some snow from the base of tree for a better look.

"Any luck?"

"No."

Dean tested the ice on the river tentatively, pushing down on it with a toe, and when nothing happened, he put all the weight of one foot on it. Still nothing. Didn't even crack.

"Should you be doing that?" Sam wondered.

Dean now stood with both feet on the icy river, and he jumped up and down a couple of times. The ice did nothing. "This thing is solid. It's fucking ridiculous. But is it a shock? It's so fucking cold I swear my balls have completely retracted inside my body."

"Dude, I told you, never tell me about your balls," Sam said, moving on to another tree.

The river was surprisingly narrow in this part, and Dean thought he saw something hunter orange hidden in the frozen grass on the opposite bank. Would Carter have come out here wearing something safety orange? He didn't know him, so he couldn't say for sure, but Bobby had described him as old hunting buddy – as in deer hunting buddy, not demons. It was possible.

He walked across the icy river, looking at some of the ice skating tracks, wondering if these kids had managed to dodge whatever was out here, and fearing they hadn't. But if it was werewolves, they wouldn't be out after sunrise, so maybe they had. He saw no sign that there had been any violence here. And skate blades were, in all honesty, fantastic weapons. They could slice through skin and tendons like a hot knife through butter. It was kind of insane to think people strapped them to their feet and gave them to kids.

"What are you doing?" Sam asked.

"There's something on the opposite bank. Might be Carter's."

"I hope so, 'cause I'm not finding anything up here. No sign of him, no sign of werewolves, nothing."

"Do you think it's possible he bugged out without telling Bobby?"

Sam considered it a moment, as Dean found his eyes following deeper grooves in the ice. A duller blade perhaps, or maybe a heavier participant. An adult? "He wouldn't have left all his stuff, though."

"Did you see his car? Bobby said it was a '98 Nissan, blue with a dent in the left side door."

"No, I didn't. Did you?"

"If I saw that piece of shit, I'd have been the first to make fun of it." Dean was within several feet of the opposite bank, and he saw that the orange he spotted in the grass was the inside of a discarded winter hat. Carter's? He still didn't have enough data.

The river was uniformly white, as fresh powder had glazed the ice, but in some spots it was thin. Out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw some color, and he looked …

… to see a face staring at him from beneath the ice. "Sam," he shouted, alarmed, dropping to all fours and wiping away more of the snow.

"What?"

It wasn't Carter. The face belonged to a young woman, maybe early twenties, with a round, pale face like the moon, and dark hair that had fanned out around her head like a frozen mane. Dean's heart trip hammered, and he considered trying to punch through the ice, but even if he could, it wouldn't have mattered. If she was under the ice, she was already dead. He couldn't imagine how cold the water was. It must have been closer to liquid nitrogen than anything else he could think of.

"There's a girl here." How had she ended up in the river? He looked around for signs of a break, a crack, a hole, but he saw nothing. The river appeared to be a solid sheet.

"What? In the river?"

Dean looked down at her, so sorry for whomever she was, when her half lidded brown eyes opened, and she stared up at him. He felt a jolt as she smiled at him, and he understood as human as she looked, she wasn't. Far from it.

Her hand smashed through the ice, and before Dean could react, she had grabbed his wrist, and pulled him headfirst into the dark, icy water.


	2. Animal

_**2 – Animal**_

"Dean!" Sam shouted, running out onto the frozen river. At first, he thought the ice had finally given way, and he had fallen through, but he never heard any of the ominous sounds that usually preceded a break.

And then there was the amount of splashing in the water, like Dean was fighting his way to the surface … or fighting something else entirely. By the time Sam reached the broken hole in the ice, he caught a glimpse of bodies under the water. Dean, and something else. It looked human shaped.

There was nothing else to do. Sam braced himself as best he could and reached into the water to grab Dean. He was not prepared for how fucking cold the water was. It was so cold it burned; his fingertips went numb almost instantly. And the thought flitted through his mind ' _Dean can't survive this'_. Because he couldn't. The water was too cold. Sam wasn't sure how he could be conscious.

But Sam found Dean's jacket, even though his fingers were numb, and he grabbed and pulled. It felt like something else was pulling Dean within the water, but Dean was still conscious, and somehow broke away and grabbed Sam's arm. He hauled him up, out of the frigid water.

Dean gasped for breath, but as Sam pulled him out onto solid ice, Sam could see he was starting to turn blue from the cold. He was still shivering, which was a good sign, but it was already slowing down. "Dean, stay with me," he said, pulling out Ruby's knife and holding it at the ready, in case whatever grabbed Dean tried to grab him again. But the water was now still, and the girl that Dean had seen seemed to be gone.

Sam looked down, and saw his brother just fade away. "Dean!" he shouted, grabbing him by the shoulders and shaking him. "C'mon! Stay awake!" His eyes were half open, but he could see Dean's consciousness just fall away, and there was nothing more frightening than seeing it happen. His eyes rolled up into the back of his head, and his shivering all but stopped. Shit.

He tossed Dean over his shoulder and fireman carried him to the car, finding himself shivering as a result. Dean was like a block of ice, radiating a bone deep chill that got through all his layers, and the feeling wasn't back to his fingers yet. Dean was probably going to die of hypothermia before he could get him back to town, but he had to try. He put him in the back, stripping off his wet coat and dropping it on the floor, and hopped in the driver's seat. He forgot the keys and had to quickly fumble them out of Dean's pocket.

There was no hospital. He was pretty sure the nearest one was about twenty five miles away, and Dean didn't have that kind of time. Sam didn't know where the Doctor's office was, assuming there was one in town. All he could think to do was get him back to the inn. He blasted the car heater as high as he dared, but he doubted it was helping very much.

He drove way too fast, especially considering the icy roads, but he didn't care. Dean was dying every second. He called an ambulance on the way, but was told it'd take at least twenty minutes to reach them due to the snow. That was too fucking long and Sam knew it.

He carried Dean to his room, and stripped the wet clothes off him, which were still icy cold. His skin was red where it wasn't slightly bluish, which he knew was a bad sign. As soon as he got his clothes off, he wrapped him in the blankets they had, but his skin was way too cold to the touch, worse than corpse like, and while he was still breathing, his heartbeat was way too faint. "We didn't come here so you could die of exposure, damn it," he told him, before running down to the front desk.

Sam asked Gerald if he had a heating pad, and thankfully he did. Sam took it back to his room, cranked it up, and shoved it under the blankets with Dean. Hopefully it would be enough.

There were bruises on Dean's wrist, where the woman – no, thing – had grabbed him, and stripping off the wet clothes, he saw two of Dean's three shirts were torn at the abdomen. It had tried to gut him, but had underestimated how many layers he had. Also, he had to assume Dean had a bit more fight than its usual prey. Sam still couldn't believe he was still conscious when he pulled him out of the water, even if he wasn't conscious for long.

What the hell was that thing? Was that what happened to Carter? If they could break through the ice and drag the river, would his body be down there? Or had the thing ate it, or whatever it did to its victims?

With nothing to do but pace and fret and try to shake some feeling back into his hand, Sam called Bobby. (And noted it was starting to snow again, as powdery flakes were drifting lazily outside the window. That would probably make the ambulance even later.) It didn't take long to catch Bobby up on what had happened. "Goddamn it, boy, is Dean still alive?"

Sam checked. He had been checking in a manner that could best be called compulsive. It looked like color was starting to come back to his face, but his lips still had a bluish cast, and his breathing was shallow. Where the fuck was that ambulance? "So far. I think he's warming up, it's just slow."

"I guess we should be thankful for small favors." Bobby didn't sound that convinced, but there was nothing he could do at the moment. "You said it was a girl under the water?"

"I didn't really see it. I saw something, but Dean was fighting with it under the ice, and I don't know what he saw. I can tell you from his reaction he thought he saw a human woman."

"So we're looking for some water dwelling creature that can appear human and doesn't mind below freezing temperatures? Shit." He heard Bobby thump a book on his desk. "Maybe it's some kinda water spirit. A spirit doesn't give a shit about temperatures."

"But Carter was out there presumably hunting werewolves. What's the connection?"

"Damned if I know, son. They seem to be unrelated monsters hunting in more or less the same neck of the woods."

"How much sense does that make?"

Bobby snorted. "It's the apocalypse. I'm not sure anything makes sense any more."

Sam left Bobby to research, and called Cass. He got his awkward voice mail (if it was any other time, he might have had a good chuckle at Cass's obvious attempts to converse logically with a machine, but he wasn't in a laughing mood right now), and left him a very to the point message. "Dean needs you. He's dying. As soon as you hear this, come to Colorado." Sam knew that as soon as he heard it, he'd drop everything and show up. Because it was Dean, and he was in trouble. He just didn't know if Cass would be in time.

Dean was hanging in there, he wasn't dead yet, but he wasn't improving a lot. Sam kept willing the ambulance to show up, while the snow kept building up outside. When they finally did, there was two inches of new snow on the windowsill, and it was still climbing.

The EMTs – a younger guy with brown hair, an older guy who was balding – both wore thick parkas over their uniforms, and yet both looked really cold. They worked quickly and efficiently on Dean, and told Sam what he already knew: his body temperature, heartbeat, respiration, and blood pressure were too low, and they needed to get him to the hospital immediately. Sam went with them.

He got into the back of the rig with Dean and the younger EMT, while the older one drove. The younger EMT, whose name was Marcus, zipped Dean into what looked like a modified sleeping bag, and wasn't much different from that, except the inside was mylar, the same stuff they made emergency blankets out of. It reflected maximum body heat back to whoever was inside it. "We get a lot of exposure and hypothermia calls this time of year," he said, by way of explanation. "What the hell were you doing out at the Sterling anyway?"

"We were looking for a friend." Not a complete lie.

The EMT seemed to accept that, although he looked slightly doubtful. "How did he fall through the ice? It's pretty thick."

Sam shrugged. "That's what we thought too, but, I guess not thick enough where we were."

Sam felt the ambulance fishtail slightly as they left the parking lot, and had to grab the wall to keep from being slammed into it. Marcus looked up towards the front. "Pete, we okay?"

"The road's icing up like a son of a bitch."

"So be more careful," Marcus said unhelpfully.

They'd gone maybe half a mile before Sam felt a weird wobble, and Pete exclaimed, "Shit."

"What now?" Marcus asked.

"Slid off the road. I'm not getting any traction at all. I think the front right tire is caught on a patch of black of ice."

Marcus rolled his eyes, and said, "Fine, I'll see what we've got." He popped open the back door of the rig, and a biting cold wind blew in, along with a flurry of snow that made the whole world look white. You couldn't even tell if it was night or day.

It was a fight for Marcus to shut the door against the wind, and once it was done, Sam wondered when he was going to admit too many things were going wrong. Because there were. He could tell himself some of Dean's paranoia was rubbing off on him because, seriously, who would be deliberately controlling the weather? It was just a winter storm with shitty timing, exacerbated undoubtedly by the apocalypse. Except he really couldn't shake the idea that something didn't want Dean getting help. Or going anywhere.

Sam was checking his gun when he heard Marcus let out an aborted scream.

"What the hell happened?" Sam shouted up to Pete.

Pete was leaning across the front seat, trying to look out the passenger window. Even with the windshield wipers going, all Sam could see out there was white. "I dunno …" Pete let out a breathless exclamation and shoved himself backward, but then the glass shattered and a furry arm lashed out and grabbed him, dragging him screaming out of the rig. It happened so fast Sam wasn't sure what he had seen. Again!

But he was ready. He braced himself, and aimed the .45 towards the rig doors, waiting. Finally, one was thrown open, letting in the howling wind and blowing snow, and Sam opened fire on a black bear.

It was six feet long, although since it was standing on its hind legs it was easily seven feet tall, and he guessed its weight to be about four hundred pounds. It let out a roaring kind of bellow, showing ivory teeth and letting out a fetid blast of breath, as one of its huge paws swiped forward. The claws dug into Sam's leg and pulled him forward as he screamed in pain and kept firing, emptying the clip into the bear's face. He sent teeth flying from its muzzle, pulped one of its eyes in its socket, and put holes in its chest and foreleg, but it wasn't reacting to pain or damage at all. He knew a .45 just wasn't going to do much against a bear this big, but it should have reacted to something.

Gun empty, the bear had pulled Sam close enough to try and bite him, and as its muzzle lowered Sam pistol whipped its snout with the butt of the gun, hard enough that he heard bones crack.

The bear finally didn't like that, and as it reared back Sam shoved himself back into the ambulance, but not before the bear's claws raked down his leg, tearing denim and flesh and causing blood to spurt and splatter on the walls of the rig. Sam screamed, grabbing for his leg, and another paw swipe sent the empty gun flying.

The bear sunk teeth into his leg and dragged him bodily out of the rig. He didn't have another gun (he wasn't afflicted with Dean's special brand of paranoia), but he did have Ruby's knife, which he pulled as he landed back first on the road, the snow only lightly cushioning. The bear went for his throat, and Sam stabbed it right in the head.

The bear reared back on its hind legs, knife sticking out of its cranium like a bizarre unicorn horn, and Sam saw something that made absolutely zero sense. Light flickered inside the bear's head, like he'd just stabbed a demon. But … he'd stabbed a bear. A regular bear. Right?

Except no. The flickering light died, and Sam barely rolled away in time before the bear collapsed on the road, right where he had been. The bear was dead. So was the demon that had been inhabiting it.

What the ever-loving fuck ..? Demons couldn't possess animals! That made zero fucking sense. They were incapable of inhabiting a lower life form.

Except this one had been. Somehow, someone put a demon in that goddamn bear.

The cold was now sinking icy claws into him, and he could barely see for the snow. It made the red of the blood gushing out of both his leg and the bullet ridden bear all the more stark for its crimson contrast. He retrieved Ruby's knife, which took more effort than he thought it would, and crawled back to the rig, pulling himself up since he couldn't quite stand on his mangled leg.

It took a while to get himself back in the ambulance and close the doors, but at least the exertion kept him warm. A good thing, since there was about an inch of snow in the back of the rig now. Dean seemed okay, though, or at least not worse than before.

Sam put a tourniquet on his leg over the worst of the bleeding, which hurt like fuck, but that's what tourniquets did. As it was, he was pretty sure he was going to need surgery. He could see a glimpse of white bone through one of the slashes, and was sure one of the bear's teeth had torn a muscle. His adrenaline was keeping him from feeling the worst of the pain, but he knew it was coming. "Dude, if demons can possess bears, we should just give up now and let them have the Earth," he told the still unconscious Dean. "'Cause we're fucked. I mean, if they can take over bears, they can take over lions, tigers, wolverines, snakes, sharks. It's over. The human race had a good run."

He found a painkiller in one of the medical kits, and jabbed a needle full of it into his thigh. Sam was shivering, but it was only partially due to the cold. He got a feeling he was starting to go into shock, most likely from blood loss. He had to keep functioning as long as he could.

Sam pulled himself to the partition that separated the front of the rig from the back, and opened it, even though it let in more cold and snow. Maybe if he radioed dispatch, they could send out another crew in time to save their lives. And if not, well, they were totally screwed.

It was all on Cass now. Either he showed up in time to save their asses, or they were just going to die here.


	3. The Abyss

_**3- The Abyss**_

Dean was just cold. More cold than he had ever been. It was like all the organs of his body had been replaced by blocks of ice.

Once he got as used to the cold as he was ever going to, he started noticing the pain. It was in his arms, his legs, his chest and stomach, a dull ache that had its own kind of chill. Dean was pretty sure his eyes were open, but it was so dark they might as well have been closed.

It smelled like rust and old blood, fear and pain, and he knew instantly he was in Hell. Back in Hell. Shit. The pain was from the thick hooks that were punched through his limbs and torso, suspending him above the floor. Even when you played ball with Hell, you were still in Hell. Torment and torture were pretty much all it was about.

Suddenly he wasn't alone. He could sense/smell that a couple of demons had joined him. "What's going on?" Dean asked, even though he doubted they'd tell him. They told him nothing.

It was then he heard a noise he'd never heard before. It was high pitched and eerie. It hurt his ears, and he would have put his hands over them if they didn't have huge meat hooks in them. Then the door to the room burst open, and brought in a blinding light that burnt out his retinas, but not before he saw the demons in the room with him dissolve into nothingness with a shriek. Light killed demons?

Even though he was now blind, he felt a presence in the room, different than before. Not demon. But he didn't know what it was or what its intent was, although you'd think blinding him was a hostile move. Still, he felt … warmth. Not like heat, but like … calm. Not aggression. So what was going on?

He was going to ask, but suddenly he felt something like tendrils in his mind, something exploring his gray matter. "Dean Winchester?" he heard, but it wasn't spoken. It kind of sounded like it was.

"Who wants to know?" He wasn't actually sure if he said that out loud or not.

More warmth enveloped him, and the pain and the cold went away. He was free of the chains, and felt … it was hard to say. Movement, and safety, after decades of nothing but pain and stagnation. And even though he was blind, he knew he was surrounded by light. His arm burned, but the actual heat of it wasn't so bad. After so much cold, even that was good. And his mind raced, because it suddenly occurred to him, he was out of Hell. Holy shit. He was out. How the hell was he out?

Dean gasped and opened his eyes, and found himself looking up into Castiel's blue eyes. The déjà vu hit him like a punch to the head. Did he just remember getting rescued from Hell? Holy shit …

Cass kept looking down at him, his expression as inscrutable as always. "Are you all right?"

"Yeah, I'm okay," he said, his mind reeling. He'd never remembered that before. In fact, Dean was certain that Hell memory was beyond him. Now it made him forget everything else. Until he realized he still was kind of cold. Wasn't he pulled into an icy lake? "Shit."

He sat up, and Cass sat back on his heels. He still seemed rather close, though, and it became immediately obvious why: they were in the back of an ambulance. A blood spattered ambulance. "What the hell happened?"

"Um, I got attacked by a demon bear," Sam said. He was sitting near the partition that separated the back of the rig from the front. His left leg was exposed, as one of his jeans legs was apparently AWOL. Sam still had blood splattered on his face.

"What?"

"I told you, Sam, demons can't possess animals," Cass said.

Sam shrugged. "I know. But this one was."

"That's not possible."

"Guys," Dean said, giving Cass a warning look. He seemed to return it, but he gave him the slightest nod, understanding this was between him and his brother right now. He then looked at Sam. "What?"

And Sam told him how the ambulance crew was taken out by a wild bear, that also attacked Sam, and only when he stabbed it with Ruby's knife did he realize it was demon possessed. "How many drugs have you had?" Dean asked.

"He said he only had some for the leg injury," Cass reported dutifully.

Sam sighed. "I know it's crazy, okay? I know it's impossible. But it happened."

Dean realized he was in something like a sleeping bag, and pushed it down, only to realize he was shirtless. He looked further, and discovered it wasn't only his shirt that was missing. "Where the hell are my clothes?"

"You were dying of hypothermia," Sam said. "Taking off the person's wet clothes is step one of trying to save them."

Dean rolled his eyes. "Damn it. What was that thing?"

"Bobby thought it was some kind of water spirit, but he isn't sure which kind."

He considered that. He hadn't had a lot of experience with them. Usually a water spirit looked as dead as it was. It didn't look dead under the ice. "Have you called Bobby yet?"

"I was waiting to make sure you were still alive first," Sam said. He already had his phone out, which was something.

While Sam called him, Dean whispered to Cass, "Was Hell cold?"

He tilted his head as he tried to remember. "It depended on where you were. Parts of it."

"Where I was?" He remembered Hell as hot and bloody. But he didn't remember all of it. He liked to think his mind was trying to protect him, but maybe it was more complicated than that.

Cass met his eyes, and seemed to understand. "Do you remember?"

"I think I just did." Holy shit, had he actually seen Cass's true form once? Not that it made any sense. It was just a light that blinded him, and melted demons like lava. But it was weird to think about. Also, the first thing he said – thought – to Cass was a smart ass reply. That made total sense. Some defenses couldn't even be beaten out of you.

From the sound of it, Bobby wasn't buying Sam's demon bear story either, but Dean looked at the blood splatters on the wall, and knew something horrible had happened. There was blood on the floor too. Dean also thought he smelled gunpowder. "How badly hurt was he when you got here?"

"He was in the process of bleeding to death. His leg was badly injured."

"Like he'd been mauled by a bear?"

Cass dipped his head. "Probably."

"And I bet I wasn't too hot either."

"No. Most people dying from hypothermia aren't."

Dean felt the ambulance rock slightly. "Bad storm out there?"

Cass nodded. "I think it's technically a blizzard. And I'm not sure it's natural."

"What do you mean?"

Cass looked out towards the front of the ambulance. Presumably there was a windshield, but it was buried under snow. All Dean could see was white. "It's hard to explain. It's just …"

"Your gut?"

Cass looked back at him curiously. "What?"

"You have a gut feeling it isn't right?"

"It's not coming from my gut."

"You know what I mean."

He pondered it a moment, then nodded. "As you say, my gut is telling me this is wrong."

"Okay." Dean felt like there was a puzzle here, which sucked, since he hated puzzles. He looked at Sam, and held out his hand. "Let me talk to him."

Sam rolled his eyes, but tossed him his phone.

Bobby was in mid-rant. "- if they could! But it's impossible –"

"Bobby, it's me."

"Good, you're still alive. What were you thinking walking out on a frozen river, you idjit?"

It was nice to know Bobby cared. Dean learned as a kid, if Bobby called you an "idjit", it meant he loved you. Strangely enough, he never called John Winchester an idjit within Dean's earshot, just a bastard, and a few other meaner epithets. From what little Dean had been able to piece together, since Bobby wouldn't talk about it, John and Bobby had had a huge falling out over them. Bobby didn't approve of how John was raising his kids, and it almost came to a fistfight. It was nice Bobby cared that much about them. "Could all of these things be connected?"

"All what things?"

"The water spirit, the demon bear, the unexpected blizzard. Is there a connecting thread?"

Bobby scoffed. "So Cass didn't heal everything, I guess?"

"I'm serious."

"So am I."

In a strange way, irascible Bobby was very comforting. That meant something in the world was running as it should. "Look, I know it's crazy, but everything here is kind of crazy, so let's run with it. Is there a connecting thread? It's worth looking at."

He sighed heavily. "Son, do you know what you're asking? You're asking me to stop searching for a needle in a haystack to go on a wild goose chase for a goose that doesn't exist."

"It wasn't a water spirit, or at least not one I'm familiar with. It didn't look dead, and it tried to bite me."

"Since when do water spirits bite?"

"That's what I'm saying. These things are just a little too weird." As if to make a point, the ambulance rocked slightly in another gust of wind. Dean noticed Sam was giving him his "what the hell are you on about now" look, and even mouthed the word "What " at him. "It has to mean something. It can't be a coincidence, can it?"

"It can be," he replied. But after a pause, he grumbled, "Probably isn't."

"See? It's worth looking into."

Bobby sighed. "Fine. But if you waste my time, I'm taking it out of your ass."

Dean almost told him he'd have to catch him first, but Bobby had already hung up to get to work, probably in a grumpy snit. Dean tossed the phone back to Sam.

"What do you mean they might be related?" Sam asked. "How so?"

"Fuck if I know. I just don't think it's a coincidence."

Sam dropped his phone back in his pocket and sighed, as the ambulance rocked again. "I bet that second rig is never showing up. Can you give us a lift back to the inn, Cass?"

Cass looked briefly cross, as if he was offended to be asked something so simple, or if he was simply offended to be their errand boy since he was an angel that could kick all their asses. But that expression lasted a millisecond, and Dean would have been surprised if Sam caught it. Cass grabbed both their arms, and suddenly they were back in the homely room at the inn, sitting on the threadbare tan carpet. Dean was keenly aware he was still very naked. "Gonna get dressed now," he said, getting up and grabbing his bag from where he'd left it on the chair before disappearing into the bathroom.

"Thank you," Sam said. "Did that thing still look human when it pulled you into the water?"

He took a second to think about it while stepping into his flannel lined jeans. It was kind of hard to remember. Once that cold hit him – definitely colder than Hell; it was like his mind went into instant shock along with his body – it was like he froze up, and reflex and instinct took over. The girl snapped at his face with her teeth, which were jagged and almost piranha like, but his body remembered to fight, and he got a hand on her throat and held her out of reach, even as she tore at his shirt with fingers like claws. And then he didn't remember anything. It was like his brain just stopped recording there. What the hell had she been? "Except for her teeth, yeah."

"Okay. This really doesn't make any sense."

"What are water spirits?" Cass asked. Hey, something he didn't know! Dean had a drinking game for this, but sadly he had no booze on him at the moment, and he hadn't had time to sneak a beer into the toilet tank. (An emergency cold beer was always good to have.)

"Ghosts of the drowned, usually," Sam told him. "But they're just like ghosts on land."

"Ghosts don't have teeth," Dean said.

"Even if they had teeth when they were alive?" Cass wondered.

Dean snickered, pulling on a Henley. That was layer two. A flannel shirt was layer three, and he was contemplating a fourth layer. Maybe a hoodie?

"He means they don't bite," Sam explained. "Poltergeists maybe, but there's no lore supporting the existence of water poltergeists."

"Why not?"

Sam made a noise that always meant he was stumped. "Got me. Wrong environment for it? No clue."

Dean realized it could have been a ghost gone vengeful, but he didn't think so. Of course, he wasn't sure why he thought that. He came out of the bathroom to find Sam had put on a complete pair of jeans, and exchanged his blood spattered shirt for a cleaner one. Cass was still standing where he had been when they appeared in the inn. No wasted energy with him. "So what's our next move?"

Sam used the connecting door and went to his (Carter's) room, and returned with his laptop. "I was thinking of that. There were portents, right? Maybe one was localized, give us an area to check out."

"It's a thought," Dean said, digging through the pile of his wet clothes for his weapons. They were wet, but otherwise okay. At least there was always more in the trunk.

"This whole town feels wrong," Cass announced.

"What do you mean?" Dean asked. He dried his spare gun off on his hoodie before dropping it in his boot.

He tilted his head to the side, as he did when he was trying to find a human way to put an inhuman concept. "The energy's not what it should be."

"Thanks, Zelda Rubinstein. We'll keep that in mind."

"What –" Cass began, but Sam interrupted him.

"One of the first portents was at the McCabe farm, out on Willow Road," Sam read. "An entire orchard went from alive to dead overnight, and on top of that, the trees looked like they had been dead several years, not just hours. Fruit withered on the branches."

Dean nodded. "Sounds good. Cass, can you get us out there?"

He narrowed his eyes at him. "I'm a taxi service now?"

Dean jerked his head towards the snow covered window. "Do you trust us to drive out in that and not die again?"

"Fair point."

Dean made sure he had enough weapons to cover multiple contingencies, including ghosts, and Sam left his laptop on the bed before Cass took their arms and moved them out to the McCabe farm.

It was jarring to go from a temperate motel room to almost knee deep in driving snow, but it was easier than driving. But frankly, they couldn't have. Dean held his hand up in front of his face, and barely saw it. It was a blizzard, and a hazard top to bottom. Its sudden arrival was all the more suspicious.

Cass had teleported them to the dead orchard, which was immediately obvious. The trees were like blackened, withered skeletons, jarring against the white snow piled on them and burying their trunks. Dean was just processing this, when Cass said, "Tremendous evil was here."

"Is that a guess, or ..?"

He shook his head. "There's faint energy traces."

"Traces of what?" Sam asked, shrugging deeper into his coat.

"Something demonic. I can't get more specific than that." Cass then headed off, tromping through the snow, his trenchcoat standing out against all the white. Even though that and his usual dark suit and tie was all he was wearing, the weather didn't bother him at all. Why would it? He was an angel.

Dean and Sam followed, although the depth of the snow slowed them down, and they almost lost him a couple of times, even though he was only a couple of feet ahead. Whiteout conditions.

Finally there was a bit of a clearing, and it was genuinely chilling. Cass had stopped in front of a barn, whose brick red paint was fading and peeling from years of disuse. For a second, Dean thought someone had cleared out the area in front of the barn, maybe to pull equipment out of it. But the circle that ran around the barn was about eight feet wide, and no snow seemed to landing there. Which was a shame, as it would have covered up all the corpses of dead birds.

They were about an inch deep within the ring, birds of all kinds, from tiny sparrows to huge crows, with a couple of bats and a squirrel thrown in for good measure. Sam gasped when he realized he was looking at a ring of dead animals. Some of the corpses were desiccated and seemingly old, while others looked remarkably fresh. When loose feathers blew out of the eight foot circle, they were instantly buried by the snow. The barn door was slightly ajar.

"Cass," Dean asked. "Are you getting a sense of anything alive in there?" He shook his head. "What about on the entire farm?"

He cocked his head, and considered it a moment. "No. Everything's dead here.""

Did that include the McCabes? It must have. "Good work, Sammy," Dean said. "I think you found ground zero."

But ground zero of what exactly? Dean pulled out his gun, even though it might have little effect on whatever they were facing, and started towards the barn, dead birds crunching under foot.

Maybe with Cass here, they wouldn't die so fast this time. Or at least he could hope.


	4. Oxen Hope

_**4 – Oxen Hope**_

The inside of the barn smelled like burned flesh and sulfur, so if there was any doubt they were dealing with something demonic, that was instantly dispelled. Dean also felt something akin to biting on tin foil. It made him cringe and reflexively shake his head, even though it wasn't a purely physical sensation. It was an almost overwhelming feeling that made him want to flee the barn, but he pressed onward.

The barn seemed empty, save for a few bales of hay and some rusting garden and farm tools. But the floor was burnt, like there had been a fire here, although strangely localized to the floor alone. "Hey," Sam said, moving to the far side of the barn. "Look at this."

Dean walked over the charred mess to where Sam was, and saw what he'd discovered. There were faint red marks on the floor, maybe from a marker. Most of it had been burned away, but it was clear it made a triangular point, and there were some other markings next to it. "Devil's trap," Sam said.

"Shit." If the rest of the trap had been burned away, it was huge. And also fucked up, as clearly whatever they were trying to trap escaped. Either they did it wrong, or the demon was too powerful to be contained by a simple trap.

"Who would do this?" Cass wondered.

Dean shrugged, kicking at the ashes, hoping more of a clue would show itself. "A total idiot?"

"The question is, were they trying to trap something that was already here, or were they trying to summon something?" Sam asked.

Dean groaned, as the wind whistled through loose boards. "Save us from assholes who dabble in demon booty calls."

Sam was still crouched down near the floor, and just from the way his brow was furrowed, Dean knew he was trying to work out what happened here. "Okay, so … let's say someone tried to summon a demon. Why? And who?"

"I think we need to worry more about what it is, and how it connects to storms and demon bears."

Sam frowned at him. "But if we figure out the motive, we can probably figure out what type of demon they summoned. That will narrow things down."

"Assuming they did it right," Dean countered. "What if they expected to summon one kind of demon, but got another? It might explain the broken trap."

He exhaled heavily. "Fuck."

Dean looked at Cass, who was still standing near the barn door. Again, no wasted energy with him. But he was looking vaguely troubled. Dean followed his gaze, but it appeared he wasn't looking at anything Dean could see. "Cass, you getting something?"

"There's traces of a kind of energy I haven't encountered in ages."

"Our ages or your ages?" Sam asked. A good question, as there was a huge difference between the two.

Cass looked briefly puzzled. And glanced at Dean for help, but all he could do was shrug. "My ages."

"I assume that's bad?" Dean guessed.

"It's not good."

Dean waited for more, but he seemed to have stopped talking. Dean stared at him, and finally said, "Well what is it, Cass?"

Cass looked at him like he thought it was a foolish question. "The Hantu Raya."

Dean shot a glance at Sam, in case he knew what it was. From the small shake of his head, he didn't know either. "What the hell is that?"

"It's a type of demonic sub-species, which was banished from the Earth a very long time ago." Cass rubbed his eyes, and his body language was suddenly tense. "They command a species of lower demon that can inhabit animals. There are also types that inhabit water and eat people. I think there's even a storm hantu. This all makes sense now."

Sam stood up, and made calming hand gestures. "Cass, we don't know what that is. Enlighten us."

"Hantus are demons with ghost like powers. They can possess people and animals, although certain kinds specialize in either people or animals. The Raya is the … leader of all the hantus. He can command them. I assume that whoever did this idiotically called up the Hantu Raya. And once he was on Earth, he opened the door to the others. This is terrible. We need to find him and send him back before more hantus spread out from here."

"Yeah, we're on board with that," Dean said. "How do we do that?"

Cass scowled, and looked down at the floor as he thought. "I don't know. I didn't banish them."

Dean threw up his hands and rolled his eyes. Sam was still trying to make sense of this. "What hurts hantus? How can we stop them?"

Cass considered this, his worried frown plastered on his face. "Sandalwood."

"Sandalwood?" Dean repeated.

"They don't like the smoke."

"Incense?" Dean asked, not quite believing this. "They don't like incense? I don't either. Does that make me a hantu?"

"No. You're a Human."

"Sandalwood kills them?" Sam asked, staying on topic.

"No, it just repels them. In enough quantities."

Dean shot a look at Sam, who just shrugged. It was a shitty answer, but it was all they had. "Ruby's knife worked on one, right? So does the same shit that works on other demons work on them? Salt, holy water?" Dean was just grasping at straws.

Cass actually shrugged. "Possibly. It's worth a try."

At least that wasn't a no. Dean had no idea why his anger just surged, but now he was trying to tamp it down. Everything was just so frustrating lately, and hey, didn't he almost die of hypothermia? He was probably allowed to be a little grumpy after that. What a shitty way to go. At least Sam got mauled by a demon bear. That was pretty cool. "What does a Hantu Raya look like?"

Cass grimaced. "A Human."

"So how do we find him?" Sam asked.

Cass looked away, which Dean took as an awful sign. "I should be able to tell."

"What about us?" Dean asked.

Now Cass turned his way, and shot him a look he interpreted as apologetic. "You probably won't know until he attacks."

"Then I guess you're watching my ass 'til we kill this thing."

"Am I to assume devil's traps don't work on hantus?" Sam asked.

"Not traditional ones. Solomon's Seal might. But not on the Hantu Raya. He's too powerful to be held by any trap."

Fantastic. There was no way to quickly draw up a Seal of Solomon. Those things were involved. "Is there anything else you can tell us that might help?" Sam prompted.

Cass shook his head. "As I said, I wasn't involved in their banishment. All I know is they were locked away because they were considered too dangerous. Even other demons didn't like them. They shouldn't have been able to return to Earth so easily."

"Could this be more apocalypse shit?" Dean guessed.

"It's possible, although I fail to see how releasing the hantus helps either side."

"Are there any hantus around here now?" Sam asked, taking a final look around.

Cass shook his head. "They're gone."

"Take us back to the inn. I have some research to do."

Dean was all for that, even though he had a sawed off full of rock salt with him. Wouldn't kill them, but would probably hurt like fuck, and he'd settle for that. But in a blink they were back, and Dean was suddenly grateful, because he could feel his fingertips again. He was really going to have to break down and wear gloves, even though they interfered with his feeling on the trigger.

Sam called Bobby and put him on speaker, and he and Sam and Cass discussed hantus, while Dean put down salt lines in front of the doors and windows. Apparently there wasn't a lot of lore about hantus, and according to Bobby, what little existed was garbage, because hantus seemed to have gotten mixed up with ghosts, vampires, succubae and incubi, as well as zombies and wraiths. Cass muddied the waters by saying some hantus had powers very similar to those monsters mentioned, except for the vampire thing. Only vampires were vampires.

The storm hantu was a real bitch. Cass didn't know how they were going to get to that one, and it was most likely the cause of the blizzard which was now piling up about a foot of snow per hour. At this rate, they'd be unable to leave their room by tomorrow. The only good news on that front was all a storm hantu could do was cause a storm; it couldn't attack people, it couldn't possess them. It could just bring down hell in weather form. But Cass was hoping if they took out or banished the Hantu Raya, the rest of the lesser hantus in his control would go with him.

Dean really didn't like hearing that there were hantus that could possess people and make them crazy. They'd just been through that not too long ago with the wraith in the mental hospital, and he and Sam barely survived that one. Being nuts wasn't any fun. He was still trying to drink some of those memories away.

There was absolutely nothing in the lore about defeating them at all, so they had to go with usual demon stuff and hoped it worked. And Cass's sandalwood suggestion, which Dean still couldn't take perfectly seriously. When he suggested they try patchouli since it smelled even worse, both Cass and Sam gave him dirty looks. But it was true! That shit smelled awful.

Cass was still trying to think of something that could help them kill/banish the Hantu Raya, but as he grouchily reminded them, being cut off from Heaven limited his available resources. He was left to scouring his memories for even the vaguest mentions of them. Apparently no one had even mentioned them for centuries.

Once Dean had salted up the place as much as it could be without making a carpet of the stuff, Cass popped out for a second, and then returned with a massive pile of sandalwood. Mostly incense, but some essential oil, which Sam had some ideas about using, and a branch that Cass tossed to him. "Maybe you can make a weapon out of it."

"Not much of one," he grumbled, but he supposed he could carve it into a stake. It was nice of Cass to bring him something he could use for stabbing. Made Dean feel a little less helpless.

While Sam went to work on his essential oils idea, the room soon became rank with the smell of sandalwood, guaranteeing no hantu would want to come in here, and it was starting to give Dean a headache. Or maybe it was hunger. Because he was starving, and he was about to start gnawing his own arm off if he didn't get a drink. (His flask was already emptied.)

Sam saw him putting on his coat, and asked, "What the hell are you doing?"

"Making a beer and food run. Want anything?"

Sam stared at him in disbelief. "There may be hantus all over the place."

"It's just down the street. And I have guns." He held up the sawed off full of rock salt, in case he forgot it.

Sam shook his head. "Nope. Too dangerous."

He rolled his eyes. "I'm goin'. I'll just be gone ten minutes."

"I'll go with him," Cass said.

That seemed to appease Sam. Dean felt it was like sending a babysitter after him, and he didn't appreciate it, but it was honestly good to get out of there. He added Ruby's knife to his arsenal and left with Cass following behind.

Outside, the blizzard was even worse. No one was driving, which was probably for the best, as the street looked as icy as a skating rink. Dean's first tentative steps on the snow drenched sidewalks told him he needed to add at least five minutes to his travel time, just for trudging through all this snow. As usual, Cass was bothered by none of this. "Are you all right?" he asked.

Dean was surprised. "Except for being in a town filled with demon-ghost monsters we can't see, that can possess anything at any time? Yeah, I'm peachy."

"That isn't what I meant. You've been … irritable and distracted since we found the barn."

"I'm hungry, okay? And tired. And I hate being cold."

Cass was giving him that side eye again. It was the side eye that said he wasn't sure if he should trust him or not. "It isn't more than that?"

"It isn't."

There was quiet as they trudged up the street, if you didn't count the howling wind. Dean's nose was already numb. They had almost reached the small general store when Cass said, "I know you're despairing –"

"Cass, please, I just want to drink my feelings, okay? Leave it alone." If the store wasn't open, Dean decided he'd break into it, but he caught a break. It was open.

"That's not a good idea, Dean."

"Neither was coming here, but we have to live with our choices, right?" The store was warm enough that it almost felt like a sauna contrasted with the outside, and he was glad he could feel his face again. Dean looked around for an employee, but saw no one. His paranoia kicked in, but he told himself the clerk could have just run into the back room for a minute, or even an hour. Wasn't a lot of people braving the weather right now. Had to be dead in here.

Dean spied the cold case and precious beer, and started walking back there, while Cass remained in the doorway, letting all the cold air in. "There's something wrong."

He sighed. "Yeah, I know. I'm getting beer and we're outta here."

Dean had just reached the case and pulled the door open when he heard a growl.

He turned slowly, and found that a pack of wolves had just come out of the back room. He honestly wanted to think they were dogs, but nope, too big, the coloring too uniform and silver gray. There were six of them in total, ranging from six feet in length to about four feet in length, roughly in the fifty to seventy pound range. There was one that kind of looked like a coyote near the back, but it probably didn't matter to the pack if they were all demon possessed. And you kind of had to assume that at this rate. They were all snarling at him, lips pulled back to reveal muzzles full of teeth. "Cass," he said quietly, hoping not to alarm them.

Cass appeared at the head of the aisle, and held out his hand, enveloping the animals in a bright white blast of light. Dean closed his eyes and backed up, as the light even bled through his eyelids –

\- just like in Hell, right? –

\- and something heavy fell on top of Dean, nearly breaking his neck, dragging him to the floor. He opened his eyes to find a young man, maybe no older than twenty five, in a polyester clerk shirt, sitting on his chest and grinning down at him. No, not grinning. His lips were pulled back to reveal all his teeth, like the wolves, only he was making an odd humming noise in the back of his throat. Strings of saliva dripped from the corners of his mouth, and his eyes were just … empty. Whatever higher intelligence he had had taken a backseat to the hantu currently inside him.

Dean was prepared to get punched, which was why it was so shocking when the clerk attempted to gouge his eyes out. Dean grabbed his hands, surprised by his wiry strength, and managed to roll over, pinning the clerk beneath him, but now the clerk was making a noise. "Eeee!" Almost a scream.

"Stop!" Dean shouted. "You gotta fight this thing!"

The clerk rammed his knee right in Dean's junk, and he let go of the guy and scrambled back as the clerk continued making that weird, high pitched noise. The clerk followed Dean, crawling on his hands and knees like an animal, drool continuing to fall.

Dean did his best to ignore the crippling pain in his balls, and pulled out Ruby's knife. When the clerk suddenly lunged at him like a goddamn monkey, Dean buried the knife in his chest. There was a flicker of light in his torso as the demon died, and once it was over, Dean pulled the knife out and let the clerk fall to the floor. Goddamn it.

"If it's any consolation, he was most likely gone," Cass said. "Hantus aren't kind to their hosts."

Dean slumped against the shelves, and was about to say something caustic in reply, but then he saw Cass was at the head of the aisle, with the wolf pack lined up placidly behind him. "Uh," was all he managed.

Cass followed his glance. "I was able to remove the demons. They're not as hard on lower life forms. And they understand completely that you are not food."

"You talk to animals?" Dean honestly didn't know why he was surprised. That seemed like an angel thing to do.

"You don't?" Cass suddenly turned, and looked down at the largest wolf, that was currently looking up at him. Cass then gestured at the store's doors, and they opened, and the wolves filed out, one by one. Somehow this was more bizarre than the drooling clerk who forgot how to use language. As soon as the wolves were out, the door shut. "It's been a hard winter for them. The hunting hasn't been that good."

"Uh … okay. Now crazy doesn't seem so bad."

"We really should get out of here. The fact that there was more than one hantu doesn't bode well."

"Right. As soon as I can stand, I'm with you."

Cass came towards him, brow furrowed in concern. "Are you hurt?"

"You are not touching my junk." Although it hurt enough Dean was almost considering it when there was a weird noise, and something made him look up.

There was a man crawling across the ceiling.

He was middle aged, and one of those guys who had a beer gut, but everywhere else looked like he was made of pipe cleaners. He turned his head and looked down, spotting Dean with his empty eyes, and his lips were skinned back, revealing teeth in some need of dental care. He also started making that noise, "Eeee."

And that was the moment two dozens rats flooded the store, headed straight for them.


	5. Start Cutting

_**5 – Start Cutting  
**_

Sam spent a long time trying to convince himself he was wrong. Ultimately, he didn't.

Even though it was terrible and never worked, Dean was a champion at repressing. He did it until he exploded, and then, once he had recovered from the explosion, he started repressing again. That was his thing. It started when he was a kid, and hadn't changed. Only now he was more open about getting completely shitfaced drunk and seeking out fights to vent his rage.

Dean was on the verge of a major explosion. He had been repressing since Ellen and Jo died; since their asylum trip; since Famine. When he finally cracked, he'd blast like a suitcase nuke, and Sam didn't want to anywhere near him when he went off. Except he had no choice now. They were snowed in and stuck with a bunch of hantus, and Dean about to go bananas. He was at his lowest point since he returned from Hell, no matter how Dean pretended – poorly – that he was just fine.

Part of Sam was pissed off at Dean. Did he not think he was depressed? Lucifer wanted to ride him; at least Dean got Michael. Not that any angel wearing them as meatsuits was good, but at least Dean was looking at someone other than Satan. Yeah, everything sucked top to bottom, and the apocalypse was looming, but Sam wasn't stewing, was he? No. He was just secretly angry at everything, which was so much healthier.

Fuck. Here he'd been hoping a case would take his mind off everything.

He was working on combining a mixture of holy water, sandalwood oil, and salt into a hantu Molotov cocktail. Would adding fire help, or would it be gilding the lily? He wasn't sure. He had to ask Cass when he got back.

Could Cass tell how bad Dean was doing? He wasn't sure. You'd think being an angel he would, but Sam had given up deciding what an angel could see and what they couldn't. He still wasn't over the fact that, instead of being happy marshmallow bunnies, angels were mostly warmongering dicks. And Cass and Dean had their thing. He was pretty sure Dean didn't know it was a thing, but Cass was pretty much his guardian – and occasionally tormenting – angel. In a way it was a relief. If they survived this apocalypse thing, and if Dean survived and Sam didn't, at least there'd be someone watching out for Dean. That made him feel a little better. Dean liked to think he was a loner, but without someone he had a tendency to spin off his axis and get into some deep and terrible trouble. He didn't seem to know how to function without a mission and someone to look after. Sam was kind of surprised the psychiatrists didn't have a field day with him.

The first time he heard the noise, he attributed it to ice falling off the roof. The snow was coming in so heavy, it must have been threatening the structural integrity. But the next time the noise occurred, he realized it was too sharp, and too close. Sam looked up from his work, and looked around the room, just in time to see a dark shape slam into the room's one window.

He went to look, but just as he thought, it was a bird. It was outside, lying dazed or dead in the snow, a sparrow of some sort he guessed. Sam thought all the remaining birds in town would have flown south for the winter, but maybe not. Maybe the blizzard came in too fast, and some were just stuck here, no different than the humans.

Sam watched as the bird got back to its feet – not dead, which made him glad for some unfathomable reason – shake off the snow, and fly off. Sam turned away, but out of the corner of his eye, he saw a dark streak heading towards the window. He turns back in time to see the bird hit the window again, harder this time. This time there was flecks of red blood on the snow where the bird has fallen.

Sam watched as the injured bird – dead? – got to its feet again, and realized, with a sinking sensation, that hantus could possess birds too. The bird flew off into the blizzard to come back and do it again, and Sam knew it would do this until the bird's body was so pulverized it couldn't function anymore. Sam was just thinking he was glad it wasn't a bigger bird, one that might actually have a chance of breaking the window, when a huge crow, about the size of your average house cat, perched on the outside of the windowsill, cocking its head so one beady black eye could look up at him.

You couldn't read intelligence in a bird's eye, not really. But Sam just knew there was a hantu in there, and it was as close to gloating as anything in a bird could get. Son of a bitch.

The window wasn't going to hold against an assault by a bird that size. It would cut itself to bloody ribbons busting the glass, but a demon wouldn't give a shit about the integrity of the vessel. And once inside … what the hell was the rest of the plan? How many animals were joining this party?

Sam didn't have a choice. He was going to have to throw open the window and see if these hantu Molotov cocktails worked. And if not, well, might as well find out they're screwed before more bears came to town.

Cas turned his light on, but there were too many rats coming from too many directions, and he couldn't get them at all at once. So as Dean scrambled back to avoid the ceiling guy dropping on top of him, he was also besieged by rats at the same time. "Oh, come on!" he shouted, although he wasn't sure to whom. There ought to be some kind of appeals court for this kind of thing.

The ceiling guy dropped down in front of him, bones cracking as he lunged at him, all the time making the skin crawling noise. "Eee!" Dean was about to stab him when he felt a rat scurry up his pant leg, and as he looked down to knock it off, the guy grabbed him by the throat and slammed him into the cold case, hard enough to make the glass crack.

The rat bit into his flesh, and the man dug his fingernails into his skin, and Dean stabbed him in the gut with Ruby's knife. Even as he died, his fingers continued digging into his flesh. And the rat – now rats – kept gnawing on him. "Give me a fucking break!" he snapped, kicking ceiling boy away from him, and ripping rats off his leg. One took a good chunk of flesh with it. A huge rat jumped off a shelf and seemed to be aiming for his face, but he managed to punch it out of mid-air. "Get your animals under control, Cass, if you want them to live."

Now Dean could hear more of that noise – "Eee!" – coming from the back. "Oh, fuck me. Cass, I think we'd better get out of here."

Cass finally came back from his rat saving, and he was actually holding one. Why? "Agreed." Cass touched his arm, and in a blink they were back at the inn. For some reason, Sam was closing the window, and standing in a tiny pile of snow that was busy melting into the carpet.

"We miss something?" Dean asked, trying to ignore the pain in his legs. Fuck, rat bites hurt.

Sam turned, surprised. "Yeah. My hantu Molotov cocktails work on birds, at least. Don't know if it will work on anything else." Sam stared at him a moment. "What the hell happened to you?"

"Ceiling guys and rats."

"What?"

"I would not advise going to the store," Cass said. He was a master of the understatement.

Sam then noticed Cass had a small animal crawling up his arm. "Uh, rat."

"Yes," Cass agreed. It perched on Cass's shoulder like the world's worst parrot impersonator. "She can help us."

"Umm," Sam said, clearly not sure what to say.

"He talks to animals," Dean said.

He nodded. "I was just getting that." Sam cleared his throat, and seemed to be struggling to keep a straight face. "So, uh, how can she help us, exactly?"

"She knows where the Hantu Raya is. Or at least she can find him. She remembers his scent/energy signature."

"Oh." Sam was now biting the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing, but it wasn't working, and now Dean was finding it difficult not to laugh. "I'm finding it hard not to think of Ratatouille right now."

"You're hungry too?" Cass asked.

That was it. Dean started laughing, and Sam did too. It went on for almost a minute, as it was hard to stop once they got going. Cass just looked between them, baffled. "What's so funny?"

Dean finally got to the place where he could talk. "Hard to explain." He wiped the tears from his eyes. Man, he needed that. "So the rat's gonna help us find this Raya guy?"

Cass nodded. "They're highly intelligent creatures."

"And they were trying to eat me in the store." Dean said.

He gave him a slightly cross look. "They were demon possessed. It wasn't their fault."

"Okay, I have to hear what happened now," Sam said.

So Dean gave him the abbreviated version, and half way through the story, he noticed Sam was starting to crack his knuckles.

Dean hadn't seen him do that since he was a teenager. It was a nervous habit he made himself give up because, in his words, it was "disgusting". But here he was starting to do it again. When he caught himself, he crossed his arms over his chest, and a muscle in his jaw twitched. What was going on with him? When he was done with his tale, he asked, "You okay, Sammy?"

"I'm fine," he snapped. Dean saw him visibly try and rein in his temper. "I'm just getting tired of this asshole throwing animals at us. If he wants us so bad why doesn't he just face us?"

The rat on Cass's shoulder was standing on her hind legs and sniffing the air. It was funny, but for some reason Dean didn't feel like laughing. Dean suddenly felt really hot, like he was wearing too many layers for indoors, and took off his coat. "We'll try and kill him, that's why."

"Something's wrong," Cass said. His rat pal seemed to agree with him.

Sam threw his hands up in the air. "Gee, thanks for that, Captain Obvious. What exactly has been right in this town?"

Dean now took off his hoodie, as he was sweating buckets. Did Sam jack up the heat or something? "I hope your rats didn't give me the plague," he groused, throwing his coats on the bed. Still too hot. Off came the flannel.

"They do not have the plague," Cass said.

"Why are you stripping?" Sam asked, annoyed.

"You got it way too warm in here." Out of the corner of his eye, Dean thought he saw a flicker of a flame, but when he looked, nothing appeared to be on fire.

"No I don't. Since when are you such a bitch about the temperature?"

Cass was now giving Dean his concerned look. "You don't appear well."

Dean actually felt a little dizzy as well as hot. "Maybe I was hungrier than I thought," he said, sitting on the edge of the bed. Dean rested his head in his hands, and waited for the wave of dizziness to pass. Sweat was just pouring down his back, and it felt itchy, like drying blood. Cass put a hand on Dean's shoulder, and said something really curious. "It's not physical."

"And what the hell's that supposed to mean?" Sam snapped. Good lord, what the hell crawled up his butt?

Before Dean could ask, he suddenly found himself sitting on the floor of a room made of stone. The rock was cool against his back, sure, but sweat was still trickling down his face, and he felt weak, dizzy, and vaguely nauseous. And looking around, he suddenly understood why.

Hell. He was back in Hell.

The smell of blood, rust, and pain filled his nostrils, and Dean was aware he was no longer alone in the room. "Damn," Alastair drawled. "We were just getting to the good part. Where you failed to stop the Apocalypse, and are responsible for the death of the entire human race. That's my favorite bit."

"No," Dean said, pulling himself into the nearest corner of the room. The chains on his ankles barely let him move that far. "What … what the hell ..? You're dead."

Alastair crouched down in front of him, wisely out of hitting distance (for all the good it would do – Dean knew from experience it never did anything at all), and gave him his cold smile. "Did you really think, even if you did break the first seal, that anyone would bother to rescue your sorry ass, Dean? You are really full of yourself, aren't you boy?"

Dean scrambled for some mental footholds – Sam killed him! Cass told him! – but as he attempted to recover these memories, they all fell through his fingers like sand. This was more of Alastair's mind fuckery, wasn't it? But … it had seemed so real. "I – I was –"

"And angels?" Alastair chuckled coldly. "They do exist, but Heaven has been closed to Earth for eons. They washed their hands of it. You shaved apes are on your own. Goody for us."

Dean didn't want to believe this. It wasn't true! He was out, he escaped Hell, he … why couldn't he remember it now?

"You were always a sucker for a pretty face, Dean," Alastair continued, his white eyes positively glowing with mirth. "Male or female. Castiel does exist, from what I understand, but he's never been to Earth, not since Lucifer was caged." He leaned in, and whispered conspiratorially, "You're just a fucked up little boy in men's clothing, Dean. Do you really think Heaven would give a shit about something like you?"

Dean tried to swallow back the lump in his throat, but it felt like it was choking him. He looked down, and saw what he thought were rat bites were just cuts from Alastair's dull scalpels. He was sitting in a shallow pool of blood. Half the skin of his left arm was peeled off and hanging down like a partially shed cocoon.

Alastair's hand clamped around his ankle, and in his other hand, he held a straight razor. He was grinning ear to ear, excited by what was about to happen. "I think I need to teach you another lesson about your place in the scheme of things, boy. And I should warn you. This is going to hurt. A lot."

When Alastair sliced into his ankle tendon, Dean started screaming.


	6. The Curse

_**6- The Curse**_

It was when Sam began wondering if he could punch Cass' placid face in that he realized something was wrong.

Why was he so angry? It was like all the anger he'd been holding in, holding back, had not only been uncorked but fed somehow. Now it wanted out, and he wanted to lash out at the world. It was all he could do not to growl like a dog.

Then Dean started screaming. Horrible, painful howls of pain and rage, and he was just sitting there with his head in his hands. "What the fuck?" Sam exclaimed, feeling a black surge of rage at his brother. Weak, broken, emotionally damaged Dean – how long was he was supposed to keep propping up his ass? He wanted to crush his face and give him something to scream about.

"Dean!" Cass said, crouching in front of him. He grabbed Dean by the shoulders and shook him. "Dean! Can you hear me?"

From the way he kept howling, Sam guessed he couldn't. Cass touched Dean's forehead, and he fell back on the bed, asleep or unconscious, and Sam didn't care which. At least he'd shut up. "What the fuck is his problem now?" Sam demanded.

Cass straightened up, and stared at Sam in a way he didn't like. Did he think, just because he was an angel, he could glower at him like a bratty schoolboy? "I don't know. He seems to be locked in a hallucination. It may be related to what's happening to you."

"Nothing's happening to me. Are you implying something?"

Cass sighed. "I think you know something's wrong with you, Sam."

"Oh." He snickered. "'Cause I'm the freak boy, right? You think Dean didn't tell me you'd threatened to kill me if he didn't get me under control?" Yeah, Dean had to get super drunk, and Sam had to coax it out of him, because God forbid Dean ever said anything bad about his goddamn boyfriend. "Or was that bullshit, since I need to be alive to be Lucifer's meatsuit? An empty threat, to blackmail Dean into line?"

Cass actually rolled his eyes at him. Punk ass little bitch. "Sam, you need to focus. This may be the work of another hantu. There's a kind that focuses on weaknesses."

Sam's hands clenched into fists at his sides. He still had his gun tucked into the back of his jeans. Wouldn't kill an angel, but he bet he'd hate taking a bullet in the eye. "Are you actually calling me weak?"

"Psychic weaknesses. Everyone has them."

"Really? So why aren't you a screaming wreck?"

Cass's eyes narrowed in a way Sam found arrogant and challenging. "If it attempted to invade my mind, it would die, and put an end to the problem."

"Oh, but we're just weak humans, therefore you have to take care of us, right?"

"Focus. We need to help Dean –"

"Of course!" Sam snapped, throwing his arms wide. "Your precious Dean. We have to help him. Do you give a shit about anyone besides Dean, Cass? 'Cause I don't think you do. Tell me again how angels don't have any feelings, liar."

Cass seemed to take a deep breath. The rat on his shoulder was simply watching, and Sam realized he hated rats. He'd never thought about it before. "The hantu has cracked open your rage. I'm not sure what it has done to Dean, but I think it may be related to his time in Hell."

"I bet you think that's my fault. It isn't. I tried to find a way to get Dean out of that deal. But no, he's a stupid shit who hates himself so much he couldn't wait to throw his life away for me. I bet he even expects me to feel bad for him. But I don't. He's weak. He's always been weak. If he'd had any strength at all I wouldn't have had to use demon blood to compensate for his fragile ass. If he could just man up he wouldn't have broken the first seal, and this fucking Apocalypse wouldn't be happening."

"You don't mean any of these things, Sam."

He stomped over to Cass, who didn't flinch. "I mean every goddamn thing I'm saying, and it's about time someone said them. I'm only sorry Dean can't hear them. Maybe you should wake up so he can, if he ever stops screaming like a five year old."

Cass's mouth was a thin line, and Sam wanted to try and punch it off his face. He didn't care that he was an angel, and that was probably impossible. He still wanted to give it a shot. "I'm sorry about this, Sam."

"About what? About being a lonely, pathetic –" Cass touched his forehead, and suddenly everything went black.

For the quarter second Sam was still conscious, he was relieved Cass finally shut him up.

* * *

This was the worst time. When he found himself back together again.

You'd think being vivisected and torn to pieces would be the worst, and while you were going through it it was. But in reality it was waking up chained to the floor, whole again, aware you were only pasted back together so it could happen again. And again. Forever.

Dean knew too late that death wasn't the worst part. At least death had an end point, a place where suffering stopped. This didn't. There was no stopping this. This just went on and on and on.

He curled up on the cold stone, and tried not to give into despair, but there was nothing else left. He'd hoped, after the first ten years, he'd get inured to it, but that had never happened either. Alastair was just too good at finding new ways to peel his skin off, to tear his muscles off his body one centimeter at a time. He was remarkably creative when it came to torture.

A small part of him kept hoping Sammy was going to figure out a way to save him, but Dean had finally accepted that was never happening. If he could have, he would have before now.

This was his eternity. Being torn to pieces by a sadist, until he found a way out. And he never would find a way out. If Hell was that easy to escape, people would do it all the time. But he knew there would be a time when he would escape. As a demon. When his soul warped enough, and he became the thing he'd hunted all his life. Dean had this sinking feeling he'd be a really good demon. Cruel, merciless, all consuming. Maybe he could give Lucifer a run for his money.

He was no longer alone in the room, but he didn't acknowledge this. Maybe if the demon thought he was still unconscious, it would leave him alone. "Dean." The voice was jarring, unexpected. Castiel.

Except Castiel wasn't real. This was Alastair fucking with him. "Go away." Dean said into the floor, covering his head with his arms.

A warm hand touched his shoulder, and he flinched. "Dean, it's me. You're hallucinating."

"I said go away. I know you're not real."

"I am real. The hantus are doing this to you. You have to fight it."

Dean did something he told himself he wouldn't do. He moved his arms and looked up to see Castiel crouched beside him. And he only did this because he was desperate to see a friendly face, even if it was a fictitious one.

Cass looked down at him with concern and something like pity, and Dean could see now how there was no way he could be real. Yeah, he looked a little too perfect, but also, if there was such an ancient, powerful life form, there's no way it would give a shit about him. And the trench coat was just one of those ridiculously absurd details that gave things a kind of reality, counter-intuitively made them seem more plausible. "I'm not falling for this again. I'm not that stupid."

Cass kept his hand on his arm, and it felt warm and solid. It was extra cruel, and just like Alastair. "I rescued you from Hell, Dean. Alastair's dead. The hantu found this crack in your psyche and is exploiting it. You need to remember where you were before this."

"Hell. I'm always in Hell."

"No. Three Rivers, Colorado. Tell me you remember that."

Maybe it rang a bell. It was probably one of those nowhere towns he visited when he thought he was actually helping people, when he thought he was doing some good. He now knew he hadn't done a damn thing. He was just a waste of potential all the way down the line. Pathetic.

"Dean, damn it. It's a lie. It's trying to trap you in your own fear."

He tried to laugh, but couldn't quite manage it. "You don't need to trap someone who's already trapped. It's like shooting a guy in the head three times. Two probably covered it."

Cass made an odd noise, sort of a sigh. "Hopefully this works," he said, and touched Dean's temple.

Dean felt a sharp jolt of pain, like a lightning burst of a migraine, and suddenly saw a homely motel room, with himself sprawled unconscious on the bed, and Sammy collapsed in a heap on the floor.

It lasted a second, maybe less, but Dean felt a twinge in his gut. "What – what happened? What happened to Sammy?"

"He's okay. I put him to sleep because he was getting aggressive. The hantus are using fear against you. They're using rage against Sam. He was contemplating moving to violence, and I didn't want to hurt him. That may have been what the hantus were hoping for."

Suddenly Dean remembered the man on the ceiling, and that noise they were making. It was either a shriek of pain or one of rage, or something somewhere between the two. He was also bitten by rats, wasn't he?

Wait, no. Those were false memories Alastair fed him. Right? Dean sat up, making his chains rattle, sometimes the only sound he heard for days. His head hurt, and he didn't know what was happening anymore. "I don't – Cass, you're real?" Just the thought made him almost giddy with relief.

"Of course I am. And this isn't. I saved you. You remember that."

Dean did. He remembered that light, that felt like it was going to burn him alive, but surrounded him and saved him instead. Except … he wasn't a hundred percent sure that actually happened.

Suddenly Alastair was there, clicking his tongue and shaking his head. "You are so gullible. You're supremely fun to play with. These centuries are just going to fly by."

"He's a hallucination," Cass insisted.

Alastair smiled. "Oh, am I?"

Cass glared at him. He could see him? What did that mean? "I watched you die."

"Funny, considering you're a figment of my imagination."

"Dean, you have to reject this hallucination. I'd do it for you, but I can't. It has to be you." Cass was giving him that look, that one where it seemed he was trying to will strength to him or something. Dean had never figured out its true meaning. It was his best guess.

"How did he die?" Dean asked.

"Hard."

"Good."

Alastair was still grinning, like it was a great joke. "Ask Castiel how he died."

"How can a figment of your imagination die?" Dean asked.

Alastair's smile didn't falter. "Because imagining killing him is fun."

Dean suddenly remembered Cass showing up and saving them for Zachariah and his goons. Did Alastair really make all of that up? It seemed really convoluted and full of details that couldn't have mattered that much. Then he remembered being pulled into an icy lake.

Dean stared at Alastair. "You are dead." He tried to kill Dean again, he remembered waking up in a hospital, but Sammy had killed Alastair in return. He remembered him telling him that. And he remembered Cass telling him what Sam hadn't, that he'd used his weirdo psychic powers to do it, and in Cass's opinion, he was a little too strong to be perfectly human anymore.

Alastair chuckled. "Crushing the hope out of you is always so fun."

Dean stood up, and he imagined the chains falling off of him. They did. Cass stood up as well. "Why would I ever be scared of a piece of shit like you?"

Alastair stalked towards him, a curved blade in his hand. "Because you should be, Dean."

It came down to who he trusted more, Alastair or Cass, and there was absolutely no contest. Even if he was a figment of someone's imagination, of course he trusted Cass, all the way. "No. You're dead, and this is bullshit."

Alastair moved as swiftly as a cobra, and the blade was suddenly embedded in Dean's chest, just beneath his breastbone. He could feel the pain of it, feel blood dribbling down his stomach, but part of him realized it was just in his head. Something was trying to tangle him up in his own memories like it was a fishing net, and while he got only the vaguest sense of it, he knew it was there.

He grabbed the knife and yanked it out of himself, and stabbed Alastair in the left eye, driving the knife in until the hilt hit the bone ridge of his eyebrow. "Fuck you!" He then punched him in the side of the head, making him stumbled, and Dean didn't wait for him to regain any sense of balance. He pounced on him, smashing his fist into his face again and again. It just felt good to feel Alastair's teeth and bones break under his hands.

Alastair was laughing, even as blood drooled from his mouth. "Better. But I'm still not convinced you mean it."

Dean yanked the knife out of his eye socket, and stabbed him right between the eyes. Once, twice, and then figured fuck it, and started slicing through his neck, crunching tendons and bones, until he managed to cut it clean off. And yet he was still mad. He still wanted to hurt this motherfucking son if a bitch, and he thought of a million ways he could torture him, peel him down to nothing but bones and veins, a bundle of organic sticks.

Cass put a hand on his arm. "Dean," he said. It sounded like a warning, but he wasn't sure of what. His anger getting the best of him? It was probably too late now.

But Dean noticed half of Hell was gone. Part of it was still here, with a decapitated Alastair at his feet and Cass at his side, but the other part of the room was the motel room Cass had showed him before. "What's going on?"

Cass looked around and frowned. "The hallucination doesn't want to give up."

"Which means what?"

Cass grimaced, studying the bisected room like he could bring it together. "Can you function like this?"

"What?"

Alastair was now in front of Dean, standing over his own decapitated body. "Your technique is very sloppy, Dean. We're going to have to work on that."

Dean stared at Cass. "How am I supposed to function with this asshole on my case?"

Cass gave him his sorry puppy dog eyes with a slight shrug, and Alastair just grinned at him. "Let's see how strong you are now, Dean."

Oh fuck.


	7. Demon Brother

_**7 – Demon Brother**_

Dean told himself he could do this. He could totally do this.

For thirty seconds.

He sat on the edge of the bed, constantly seeing Hell out of the corner of his eye, and Alastair's leering, insufferable face. He was flipping his straight razor open and closed, and Dean could hear its dull click each time. And each time, he flinched. "Stop that," he finally snapped. Alastair grinned, and in the motel room, Cass looked at him curiously. "Are you talking to Alastair?"

Dean rubbed his eyes, and told himself to ignore it. It was a hallucination, and the reality was with Cass. Except when he closed his eyes, all he saw was Hell. Dean felt like his nerves had been pulled outside of his body and delicately frayed one by one, which he was pretty sure Alastair actually did to him at one point. "This is … this is gonna suck," Dean finally admitted. "Can you just point me at this hantu so I can kill it?"

"That's the spirit," Alastair said.

"As soon as we can find it," Cass said, and the way he looked at him, Dean knew it was a promise. It would have been kind of poignant if he didn't have that rat still perched on him. It was just chilling, like it was always hanging out on an angel's shoulder. Dean was quietly fascinated with the fact that, no matter how strange his life got, there was always something stranger right around the corner. You'd think there'd have been a limit, or a ceiling you'd hit, but nope, not yet.

"Angels are very weird creatures," Alastair said.

No shit.

Cass gestured down at Sam, still passed out on the carpet. "Do you have any idea how we get through to him?"

"Stab him in the head," Alastair suggested.

"He's angry, right? How angry?"

"Belligerent. Verging on violent. I fear the longer he's awake, the more violent he will become."

"Okay, so … we need something to counter that." Dean thought about this, trying to ignore Alastair clacking his razor. "Mood altering substances. We need to give him something that will chemically counter what the hantu is doing to him. I don't suppose you can magically make him drunk, can you? He's a happy drunk."

Cass frowned at him. "No I can't."

"Then can you hit up the local pharmacy and come back with some happy pills or something?"

"There are pills that make people happy?" Cass asked, genuinely curious. "Why aren't you taking them?"

Alastair laughed.

Dean shot him a nasty look. "It's an expression. Just … go empty a pharmacy of pills and bring them back. I'll find something that'll work."

"This could be dangerous."

"I know Sam. It'll be okay."

Cass blinked out of existence, leaving him alone with Alastair. "Stabbing him in the head would be easier," Alastair said.

"I'll stab you in the head," he muttered, desperately wishing for a beer. God, he really needed six or seven good drinks to handle this.

Alastair snickered. "You missed your chance, buddy boy. I'm going to be your white whale. The one that got away."

"Shut up."

He did, but then he started flicking his razor more aggressively. Bastard.

Cass blinked back into existence, and suddenly the bed was covered in pill bottles. They were two deep, and falling to the floor. "Holy shit." Of course, he did tell him to empty a pharmacy. Cass was very literal. "It's like Burning Man in here."

Cass looked around. "I think that's a Hell hallucination, Dean."

He ignored that, and started reading labels. There was a lot of penicillin and penicillin like analogs, some of which Dean saved out by putting on the nightstand. The emergency kit in the trunk of the Impala could use some of these. Painkillers too.

He then found some codeine cough syrup. "Here we go. Sam had a root canal as a kid, and they gave him codeine for the pain. He spent half the day as a whacked out goofball. Happiest I've ever seen him with blood coming out of his mouth."

Cass gave him a strange look, clearly not knowing what to say to that. Which was fair enough. Angels never had dental issues either. But Dean looked between the bottle and the unconscious Sam uncertainly. "Uh, can you magic some of this into his system somehow? I don't know how we get him to drink it without drowning him."

"It's not magic," he said, a bit annoyed. But his irritated look passed, and the rat seemed to be reserving comment. "How much?"

Dean looked at the recommended dosage, factored in both Sam's weight and tolerance, and measured out an amount on the outside of the bottle with his fingers. "This."

Cass raised his eyebrows. "That much?"

"Trust me. I know him."

He trusted Cass, and now it was Cass's turn to trust him. He touched the bottle, and bent down and touched Sam's arm. In a blink, half the bottle was gone. "It's in his bloodstream," Cass reported.

"Great." As Dean turned away, he took the cap off the bottle and took a few healthy slugs himself. The shit tasted terrible, but it might make Alastair and his fucking clicking razor a lot more tolerable. "You think you're escaping me that easily?" Alastair said. Dean ignored him.

Cass made a hand gesture and all the extraneous pill bottles on the bed and floor disappeared (Dean put the rest of the codeine cough syrup bottle on the nightstand with the rest of the stuff he was saving out), and then, with a nod of encouragement from Dean, touched Sam and woke him up.

Sam opened his eyes and blinked, and just from the way he did it, Dean knew the codeine was working great. "What the hell?" he asked, sitting up. "When did I get drunk?"

"You're stoned. But same difference." Dean replied. "We had to cure you of your sudden onset assholism somehow."

"That's not a thing." He paused for a second, then giggled. "Why the fuck am I so mad?"

"The hantus are fucking with us. They have one that plays mind games."

"Dean is still partially hallucinating Hell," Cass added unhelpfully.

For some reason, that made Sam laugh as he struggled to his feet. He stumbled into the wall, but he finally managed. "How can you tell? I'm not sure you ever left Hell, Dean."

"Part of you didn't," Alastair said. "I'm pretty sure I kept one of your ears. Maybe a ball."

Dean ignored him. "Listen, you go through thirty years of torture in Hell and see how you do."

"Maybe a bit more than thirty," Alastair said. "I still tortured you a little bit even when you were my apprentice. It was just so fun to hurt you."

Goddamn it, it was going to be hard to ignore him. Dean's gut had pretty much clenched into a fist, although now he could feel the codeine was working, and he was starting to relax a little. Thank god for drugs. "So what are we supposed to do exactly, wait here until the hantus finish us off?" Sam complained.

"We get our weapons ready and go after the son of a bitch, like we always do," he said, meaning it. Dean really needed something to punch.

"Another brilliant plan from the genius," Sam said, and leaned against the wall to keep from falling over. Okay, maybe he gave him too much codeine, but he was fucking Frankenstein tall. They usually didn't pile human stuff that high.

"You might wanna stow the attitude. I know you're not in your right mind, but neither am I. You don't want me snapping on you."

Sam snickered. "Ooh, what're you gonna do? Sob all over me?"

Alastair chuckled, as Dean went over, grabbed Sam by the forehead, and slammed the back of his head into the wall hard enough to dent the plaster.

"Dean," Cass warned.

Dean grabbed Sam by the throat, and stared him in the eyes. "Okay, kiddo, here's your one and only warning. You may be the brains here, but I'm the grunt, and do you know what that means? It means I can't think my way out of shit. I can only punch stuff until it breaks. And I am very good at that. Who taught you to fight, dumbass? Not Dad, me. I know your favorite moves, I know your weaknesses. And without a demon blood assist, I will kick your ass each and every time, and you know that. So, do I prove that now, when the codeine has slowed your reflexes to an unfair advantage, or do we put a pin in this and revisit it at a time when you're sober and in your right mind? 'Cause I'm cool either way. I can kick the shit out of you and me and Cass can take care of the Hantu Raya."

Sam glared at him, his eyes glassy from the drugs. If he was still this angry now, he must have been a real bag of dicks when he was sober. "You wouldn't."

"Oh really? Think, Sam. Use that big brain of yours. Wouldn't I, little boy?" He glared right back, ready to punch him until something in his face broke. Sneer at him like he was a hormonal thirteen year old again? No fucking way. Dean put up with his bratty phase once; he wasn't doing it again.

Alastair kept chuckling. "Now I see why Michael chose you."

Finally, Sam realized through his rage and drug haze that he didn't have a real chance here. The attitude remained in his sneer. "Fine. Whatever."

Dean let him go, but not before unnecessarily shoving him back against the wall. "You keep your shitty thoughts to yourself, or I will shut you up. Why don't you channel that rage towards the Hantu Raya, huh? Might help."

"You're a real dick, you know that?" Sam rubbed the back of his head, but Dean couldn't imagine it actually hurt through all that codeine. It was just his pride that was hurt.

"Actually, yeah. But so are you, so it must run in the family." Dean started gathering weapons, including the sandalwood branch, which he still needed to turn into something. But it wouldn't take him long.

He managed to cut it into something usable while Sam gathered up his Hantu Molotov cocktails. Dean occasionally thought he saw chains on his legs and arms, but willing those away seemed to be working for now. It was still startling to think he still had a meat hook in the center of his arm, though. The codeine was helping him be cool about it, at least in general.

They were about ready to go when Sam dared to speak again. "How are we going to find the Hantu Raya?"

Dean glanced at Cass. "Wanna handle this one?"

Cass held out his arm, and the rat walked down it, until it could jump on the bed, and from there to the floor. "She's going to lead us to him."

Both Sam and Alastair cracked up laughing. Dean had already come to grips with the absurdity of the situation, and decided to roll with it. Once Sam got himself under control, he said, "I think I saw a cartoon like this once."

The rat stopped near the door and looked back at them. Dean imagined she was calling them every rat name in the book. Assuming rats had curse words. Or names. Or books. Yeah, okay, he was done thinking about this. "I don't suppose she'd like to fight," Dean asked Cass, smiling faintly.

To his surprise, Cass nodded. "She said she'd like to attack him if possible. Most of her nest are gone."

Sam and Alastair laughed again – Alastair much harder – and Dean felt like he could laugh too, but no, rolling with it. Path of least resistance. Codeine was making him fucking Zen. He really needed to do it more often. "Well, if she got all her rat buddies together-" Sam laughed harder. "- would it help?"

"The Hantu Raya wouldn't be expecting it."

Sure. No one expected rat attack. "It'd be super helpful if we could get the bears or wolves in on this," Dean said. It did sound like a cartoon.

Cass dipped his head. "I'll see what I can do."

Was he serious? If he was serious, that might actually be good news. They could throw animals at the Raya for a change.

Cass opened the door, and the rat had to jump back as about a foot of snow fell in. It was still a blizzard out there, and the wind bit like a blade, but the little rat forged ahead, disappearing into the snow, and Cass followed. He seemed to know where she was, even though she wasn't visible. Dean got up, and followed him, still feeling more than a little ridiculous. "I didn't realize he was Saint Cass of Assisi," Sam said, pulling up the rear. That was probably a sick burn, but right now Dean didn't get it.

"You're gonna lose," Alastair crooned in his ear. "You have no real plan. Sam's too stoned, you're too crazy, and your angel doesn't have enough juice. This is a really pathetic way to go, Dean. Even for you."

The sad thing was, Alastair was probably right. But there was no help for it now.


	8. Attack

_**8 – Karma Police**_

Dean was wondering if this was the low point.

Oh sure, he'd been tortured in Hell, and he'd seen Sam die, and he figured out his Dad had traded his life for his, all fantastic low points. And of course being Michael's chosen vessel, and maybe having to fight Sam/Lucifer to the death, another historically bad low point. But following a rat through a blizzard to fight king demon ghost guy? That was just … it was humiliating. That was before you factored in stoned, surly Sam, and the fact that his torturer was always visible in the corner of his eye, making bitchy comments about everything. Goddamn, this was so much fun Dean wanted to eat a bullet right now. The codeine had been keeping him Zen until he started freezing his balls off, and that's when he lost it. Zen his ass.

The rat led them across the street, and across a lot that may have been vacant, or may have had bodies stacked like cordwood, it was impossible to tell with the odd two feet of snow they had to struggle through. (He should have asked Cass for snowshoes. Or better yet, just zapping them there once the rat figured out where their boogeyman was.) He was thinking of belatedly suggesting this, when the rat finally broke through the blanket of snow and stopped at the snow covered stairs of a very unassuming, quaint little house. It was so buried it was impossible to tell what color it was, but Dean was pretty sure the weird lumpy thing on the porch was a swing.

"Fred Rogers is the Hantu Raya?" Sam asked, trying to pretend his teeth weren't chattering.

"The name on the mailbox is Butler," Cass pointed out unhelpfully.

"How do you not gut him like a trout?" Alastair asked. "He's an angel. It won't kill him. It might get him to shut up for a minute."

The front door opened, and Dean instinctively drew his gun, even though it wouldn't do anything. Standing in the doorway was Gerald, the harmless old man who ran the inn. "Why don't you fellas come in for some cocoa? We have a lot to talk about."

Sam threw one of his hantu Molotov cocktails, which, thanks to the wind, fell a bit short and splattered on the porch. Gerald looked down at it, unimpressed. "If you boys are going to litter, I'm gonna have to ask you to leave."

"You cannot be serious," Alastair snapped. "Ultimate evil is this guy? Hell has gone to Hell since I've been gone."

Gerald retreated into his house, but left the door open, a clear invitation. Dean, Sam, and Cass all exchanged looks of various degrees of confusion.

"This is a trap, right?" Sam said. "Has to be."

"Yeah, but what's our next move if we don't go in?" Dean asked. He was genuinely wondering what it could be.

To his surprise, it was Cass who suggested half heartedly, "Burn down the house?"

"Would it hurt the Raya?" Dean asked.

"Maybe, if we trapped him in there."

"Could we get a fire going in this blizzard?" Sam wondered. As if in answer to that question, the wind kicked up and threw buckets of wet snow in their faces.

"This is pathetic," Alastair said. "I'm embarrassed for you. And I hate you."

"Oh, fuck me," Dean grumbled, and stomped up the porch steps. If he was going to be ambushed, he wanted to get it over with, before he got frostbite.

He tensed, ready for an axe to fall on his head or something, but nothing happened. He was simply standing in the warm foyer of a quaint little house, where a teakettle was whistling in the kitchen. There was a small side table overflowing with unread junk mail, and drying snow boots beneath it.

"I can't believe how stupid you are," Sam said, coming up beside him. "I mean, I know you're a high school drop out and everything, but even for you –"

Dean threw back a fist, and broke Sam's nose. "Ow!" Blood splattered on the floor as it gushed from his nostrils.

"Thank you!" Alastair said.

"I told you, shut up or I shut you up," Dean said. "Next time, it's your jaw. Got me?"

Sam glared at him, hands pressed up to his face, blood oozing out his fingers. If looks could kill, Gerald would have had to have scraped Dean's burnt remains off the wall with a spatula. But Sam didn't have his psychic boy powers now, so therefore he just looked like a pissy brat.

Cass, finally joining them in the house, said, "You really shouldn't be beating each other up right now. The Raya will be happy to do it for you."

"I know you have a knife sharp enough to do the job," Alastair said. "You know how to disembowel. One jab and a rip. You always were a blade man, weren't you Dean? Phallic much?"

"Come join me in the kitchen," Gerald called out, as if this was a visit from the welcome wagon. Cass touched the side of Sam's head, and healed his broken nose. But even after he did that, he said, "You should really listen to Dean."

Sam looked like he wanted to say something bitchy, but Dean looked at him, tacitly inviting him to say something mean to Cass. Sam loathed it, but he kept his mouth shut. For the moment.

"Oh, you're kidding me," Alastair said. "You have a crush on the angel? That is just … I'm embarrassed for you again, and I hate you even more."

Dean marched into the kitchen, gun drawn just for the hell of it. It was a tiny but neat kitchen, with a genuine Formica topped table in the center (did they make those anymore?), and lace curtains over the windows. Gerald was sitting at the table with a mug in his hand, and there were three steaming mugs sitting in front of empty chairs, clearly meant for them.

Gerald put down his cup, and glanced at the gun with a small smirk. "You really think that could do anything to me, son?"

"Don't call me that," he snapped, and considered shooting him just for the hell of it, but put it away instead. Save the surprise for when it might do some good.

"Come, sit. You guys look like you're freezing. Except for you, angel."

They didn't. The three of them just stood there, looking down at this nondescript old man, who could have played Scrooge in a local Christmas pageant. How in the hell was he the guy holding the town hostage, and threatening the world? He looked like he was in danger of breaking a hip. Gerald looked at them, still smirking slightly, the kitchen lights gleaming on his waxy bald pate. "It's not poisoned, if that's what you're worried about. I am genuinely impressed you've lasted this long. Most hunters didn't last past the animal attacks."

"There were other hunters besides Carter?" Sam asked.

Gerald nodded. "Two more. One named Bill, and another who called himself Moody. He was killed by a murder of crows, of all things. They pecked his eyes out and went straight from the brain. Nasty as shit, that one. Of course, Lucifer would be mad as hell with me if you got killed, Sam, but since when do I give a rat's ass what he wants? He lets me out, and what, I'm supposed to be grateful?"

"Lucifer released you?" Cass repeated skeptically.

Gerald nodded. "Thought the chaos would be a fun distraction. Found some pathetic teens who thought they could summon a demon and finally get laid. Of course, they got me instead. They were delicious. Nothing like fresh virgin in the morning."

"I'm changing my mind about this guy," Alastair said.

"Was there a real Gerald Butler?" Dean asked. He was just kind of curious.

Gerald – the Hantu Raya – nodded. "He's in the root cellar. Well, what's left of him. Old men taste too much like jerky in my opinion."

"I really want to stab him," Sam said, finally finding an appropriate outlet for his rage.

The Raya smiled. "You can try. But I'm sure your angel buddy there will tell you it won't do you a bit of good."

"I kinda don't care," Sam replied.

Dean sighed, and walked up to the table. "What's the point of all this? Are you going to kill us or what?"

"Getting impatient to die, boy?"

"Been there, done that, left a nasty Yelp review. I just want to know what you have in mind for us."

The Raya looked at the three of them again, clasping his mug as if for warmth. "Haven't really decided yet. I could kill you, but it might be more fun to see how long you last. You haven't even met the nightmare hantus yet, or the disease ones."

"And what do you think Lucifer or Michael will do to you if you kill us?" Dean asked.

He shrugged. "Don't know. Don't really care."

Dean glanced back at Sam and Cass. They appeared ready, although Sam's anger was clearly getting the best of him. "Huh. Pretty wishy washy for a supposed badass."

"He knows," Alastair said.

Dean pulled his gun, with the bullets dipped in sandalwood oil, but before he could fire, the Raya waved his hand and sent him flying across the kitchen, where he slammed back first into the refrigerator. From the sound of it, Sam and Cass got tossed out of the room, and the door was slammed behind them, leaving Dean trapped in here with the bastard. "That wouldn't do anything to me," the Raya said, taking a sip of his cocoa. "But I don't like gunplay in my house. It's very rude."

"I told you he knew, dumbass," Alastair said.

Dean groaned, pretty sure he'd just gotten a couple of ribs cracked. Did all the big demons have to have telekinesis or whatever? It seemed like cheating.

"You boys really can't do anything to me," the Raya said, quite pleased with himself. "I don't even think your angel can hurt me, cut off from heaven as he is. And by the way, kudos to you for sparking the first rebel angel since Lucifer. You guys are champions. You never really did have a plan for fighting me, did you?"

"Oh, we do. It's just fucking crazy." Dean could hear it now, a bit like tiny scratches. It could have just been the snow thrown up against the house by the wind, and he may have believed that, if he hadn't known Cass was serious. Because Cass was always serious. He still hadn't gotten the hang of humor yet. If there was ever time enough before the Apocalypse, before he and Sam became meatsuit puppets of two angels who couldn't get their shit together, he'd have to do better on the Cass humor front. Of course, they'd have to live through this first.

The Raya smiled over the rim of his mug. For the first time, Dean realized it said 'World's Greatest Grandpa'. "Do tell. I could use a laugh."

"A single one of us can't kill you. But all of us together might." Dean took a regulating breath, glad the codeine was at least blurring the edges of the pain. He got ready to move without looking like he was, which was really hard, but at least he'd had some experience playing passive or dead.

The Raya smiled. Not a smirk, a genuine grin. "That's adorable. You, your weirdo brother, and your half-tank angel? I don't think so. Thanks for playing, though."

"You're forgetting everybody else."

He raised one gray caterpillar of an eyebrow. "The town? Nope, they're under my control. I believe you met some at the general store."

Dean shook his head. "He doesn't get it."

"Because you'd have to be crazy to get it," Alastair said. "And I'd aim for the vertebrae at the base of the neck. Even if he doesn't need a body, that's disorienting to just rip those out. Eyes too. Use a spoon."

The Raya cocked his head curiously. "Who are you talking to?"

"The Hell torturer I'm seeing all the time, thanks to psychic hantu you sicced on us. Did you know I was his apprentice?"

"Were you? Look at you. A waste in life but a go-getter in Hell. That's super." His patronizing tone was even worse than his smug one.

The scratching was much louder now, and finally the Raya looked around, trying to pinpoint the noise. "What is that?"

"The rest of us," Dean told him. He used the refrigerator to stand up. "See, I don't think you thought it through. A half tank angel is still an angel."

The Raya stared at him a moment, brow furrowing in confusion. "So?" It was the sound of glass breaking in another room that seemed to clue him in, and the Raya dropped his mug on the table with a clunk as he stood up. Cocoa sloshed over the side. He'd been serious about that. "What have you done?"

"See, I didn't know angels could talk to animals either," Dean admitted. "I guess we all learn something new every day, huh?"

A flock of crows burst through the kitchen window, spraying broken glass, blood, and feathers all over, tearing down those pretty lace curtains, as about a dozen black birds swirled around the Raya, cawing and screeching as talons and beaks ripped his flesh. Rats started swarming out of the heater vents and floorboards, making him stumble as they climbed his legs and started gnawing on him. He swatted blindly at the crows, occasionally getting one, and as soon as Dean saw an opening, he took a shot, planting one of the sandalwood soaked bullets right in his left cheekbone.

With a gesture, the Raya threw the table, and Dean dived out of the way a second before it exploded on impact with the fridge. "You think this display with vermin is going to hurt me?" the Raya spat.

"Move," Alastair said.

Dean shoved himself farther away from the kitchen door, glad the rats were ignoring him this time. "No. They're the warm up act."

The kitchen door slammed down, and the wolf pack from the store charged in, sinking their teeth into Raya and attempting to pull him down as a group. Cass and Sam helped Dean get back on his feet. "How big a dick you gotta be that even the town's animals hate you?" Dean asked, as the Raya stumbled his way to his own kitchen door and fled outside, leaving a trail of purplish-black blood. Crows, rats, and wolves followed in his wake.

"They won't be able to distract him for long," Cass said.

Dean nodded. The animals weren't the entirety of the plan. They were simply phase one. They were phase two. "Okay. Let's get to work."

Time to see if a Hantu Raya could actually be killed.


	9. Every Day I Rise

_**9 – Every Day I Rise**_

Despite the fact that the blizzard reduced visibility to near zero, it wasn't hard to find the Raya. Not only was he leaving a trail of purplish blood behind him, but he had rats, crows, and wolves still after him. None of them really needed their eyes to find him. (Well, Dean wasn't sure about the crows.) So even when he lost sight of the blood, he just followed the paw prints. Eventually, he came across bodies too.

The crows really stood out. That reminded him perversely of a variation on that terrible old childhood riddle: What's black and red and white all over? A mangled crow corpse in a blizzard. He wasn't sure what was funny about that.

"You're hunting a Hantu Raya in a blizzard with a bunch of animals helping you," Alastair said. "This is fucking hilarious."

Up ahead, he could hear the wolves yipping and snarling. When Cass first suggested that maybe Alastair could help them, Dean thought he'd done some of the codeine too. But as he said, as awful as it was, he was Dean's hallucination. Maybe he could play a part in killing the Raya. Alastair liked to kill, didn't he? Far be it from him to ever want to help Dean with anything, but he so enjoyed hurting things. Dean actually couldn't argue with that logic, and he had tried. This was just Cass being pragmatic. He'd had the decency to look pained when he suggested it.

"Would you two fuck already and get it over with?" Alastair snapped. "And I thought you and your brother had a twisted relationship. Do you do relationships that aren't as complicated as an Escher roadmap, Dean?"

If he understood that reference, Dean was sure he'd be mad. But he didn't, and he had more important things to worry about than Alastair's taunts. Namely the coyote looking wolf had just been thrown into his legs, although the snow was so deep it didn't knock him over. The wolf, for its part, scrambled back to its feet and bounded off into the snow, back on the attack. Cass's instruction that he was not food was still holding. Although he couldn't see them – he couldn't see anything more then four inches away from him; the snow was blowing in almost horizontally now – he assumed Cass and Sam were behind him, and ready to go.

"Rip his lungs out through his stomach," Alastair said. "Even when you don't need to breathe, that kind of thing makes an impression."

As soon as the Raya came into his view, it was back first, as he was currently wrestling with wolves each trying to pull off a different arm. There was also a rat on the back of his neck, digging in with its teeth.

"Rats are smart," Alastair said. "Who knew?"

Dean had Ruby's knife, and as he approached, he decided to take Alastair's advice, and plant the knife between the fifth and sixth thoracic vertebrae. He plunged it in and twisted, feeling bones crack. "Motherfucker!" the Raya snapped, flinging wolves away and turning to face him. "That fucking stings, you little pissant."

Dean was thrown backwards, into the snow, which swallowed him like a living creature. He sunk into white, and it threatened to drown him. "Get up, you pathetic piece of shit," Alastair snapped. "He still has his lungs intact."

Dean was already done with Alastair, and wanted him to go away. But that had yet to work, so he simply started digging himself out, trying not to have flashbacks about digging himself out of his own grave. "Pussy," Alastair chided.

Once Dean popped out of the snow bank, he could hear but not see Sammy unloading a full clip of sandalwood coated bullets into the Raya, who sounded like he was kind of having a hard time now. The crux of their plan was to simply keep attacking, and see if they could wear him down until they could kill him. It wasn't the best plan in the world, but it was pretty much the only thing available.

Dean followed the sound of bullets into the white curtain of snow, and eventually saw purplish blood and dead rats breaking up the monotonous color scheme. The Raya seemed to rear up out of the white, covered in blood, his face an angry rictus, eyes starting to glow a faint purple. "You insects are really starting to piss me off," he snarled, as one of Sam's hantu Molotov cocktails hit him right in the chest. Along with the reek of sandalwood – it was getting ridiculous now – Dean thought he could smell burning flesh too. Or maybe that was just wishful thinking.

It sounded like he sent Sam flying, but Dean still couldn't see much of anything. Even the Raya was a partial view at best. It was like Dean was watching him through half-closed blinds on a speeding train.

Dean emptied his own clip of bullets into the Raya, trying to get maximum damage with each shot. Nothing wasted; all head, knees, stomach, spine. Shit that would hurt and disable, at least most things. The Raya started turning towards him, and Dean was prepared to get hellaciously hit, when a black arrow seemed to come straight out of the storm. It was a crow, and it dived right into the Raya's face, skewering his eyeball with its beak.

"I should have used more birds," Alastair noted.

The Raya made a noise of disgust and broke the bird's neck as he ripped it out, but his eye started sliding down his cheek like a raw egg, in spite of the purplish energy still glowing within the socket. Sammy was a large shadow behind the Raya, ripping Ruby's knife out of his back, and plunging it through his throat. Okay, endgame was on.

Cass was suddenly there, off to the Raya's right, and he stabbed him in the head with his angel blade, his eyes glowing blue and the shadow of his wings partially visible in the blowing snow like an inconstant mirage. Dean took the sandalwood stake out of his pocket and rammed it right through the Raya's useless heart, coming face to face with the thing. Purple blood was running from its eye(s) and mouth, but it still looked furious. "You can't do this to me," he said.

"They all say that," Alastair said. "Right before they die."

There was a sudden sense of force and pulsing darkness that sent Dean flying, but at least the landing in the snow was soft. His head swam, and he wasn't completely sure what had happened, until he suddenly realized he could see the sky. The snow had stopped falling. Also, he couldn't see Alastair or Hell out of the corner of his eye. "Holy shit." Alastair had been right. They killed him.

He just laid there for a minute, letting the cold soak into his bones as he caught his breath, and he saw a couple of the wolves left alive checking out the scene. Dean gave them a thumb's up, aware it was ridiculous, but hey, what wasn't ridiculous today? Might as well go with it.

The wolves simply turned and trotted off, which was good. They were still recognized as not food, but he didn't want to chance that without Cass around. "Everybody okay?" Dean asked. There were a couple of crows in the branches of a nearby tree, looking down at them all as if debating whether they were food or not. Did Cass not have that conversation with them?

"How the hell did that work?" Sam asked.

"He may have overextended himself trying to control all the hantus," Cass suggested. He was already on his feet, which made sense, him being an angel and all. Dean was not terribly surprised he walked over to him and offered him a hand up first. "That and an extended physical attack was clearly too much for him." Cass tilted his head in a meaningful way, and asked quietly, "Can you still see him?"

Dean shook his head. Cass patted him on the back and gave him a smile before moving on to help Sam. Much like Cass knew where the rat was, despite being buried in snow, he knew where they were too.

There was a two foot wide hole where the snow had melted, revealing the dead grass beneath. Dean assumed that was where the Raya had been. Otherwise there was no sign of him, save for purple blood on the snow, and an assortment of animal corpses. "I officially take back saying talking to animals is the weakest superpower," Dean said.

"Talking to fish is still pretty lame," Sam said, brushing snow out of his hair.

"Whales are fascinating to talk to," Cass said.

Of course he was serious. Dean didn't even want to know.

Walking back was a slightly difference experience. Sure, they still had to clumsily navigate the deep snow, but now there was an awkward silence between him and Sammy that Cass was either pretending not to notice, or really didn't notice. Hell, it was possible Cass was still talking to the animals, as apparently most of it wasn't verbal, or at least anything they could hear.

Back at the inn, the stink of sandalwood was still ever-present, and really, it wasn't that bad. Dean could almost see himself getting used to smelling like a Hindu temple. He'd smelled worse in his life. In fact, he was pretty sure he generally smelled like blood and gunpowder most of the time. He could market it as a signature scent: The Winchesters – Smells Like A Killing Spree In Every Bottle.

Goddamn, did he take a hit to the head, or was he just punch drunk? He was exhausted, and as soon as they returned to the room, Dean sprawled on the bed. As tired as he was, he didn't know if he should dare sleep, will all these fresh Hell/Alastair memories running around his head. It was an invitation to the worst nightmares ever. "I need an entire keg," Dean said.

"Um, Dean," Sam said awkwardly, and he knew what was coming. "I'm sorry for everything I said. I didn't mean any of it. I was just so angry –"

"Dude, it's forgotten," he said, and wondered if he meant it. Maybe? "Although I'm pretty sure I owe you a beat down."

"Are we keeping track of those things?"

"I sure as hell am. I'm weak like that."

Sam sighed heavily, and Dean could just imagine the face he was making. This pleased him. "Dude, c'mon …"

"If you weren't so fun to torment, I wouldn't do it." Belatedly, he realized he may have picked that up from Alastair.

Sam went to call Bobby and let him know they were still alive and the Hantu Raya wasn't, leaving Dean and Cass alone. Cass looked down at him curiously. "You're not okay." It wasn't a question.

Dean sighed, and sat up. "It's been a long fucking day. I'm tired and I need a drink, that's all."

"Reliving memories of Hell couldn't have been easy for you."

"I so don't want to talk about this," Dean said, giving him a pleading look. "You wanna help me? Get me a bottle of whiskey. Otherwise, I'm good, Cass. We won. Town's free, and we might not all be buried alive by snow." Dean couldn't help but wonder if there were any other wins in their future. The whole Michael/Lucifer thing … he had nothing. He was hoping by now something would occur to him, or Sam, or Cass, or Bobby, but it was a big goose egg so far.

If he said yes to Michael … would he get his body back eventually? Assuming he won. Would he get to see Heaven instead of Hell for a change? Might be nice. And if he could save people, maybe not everybody but a lot … wasn't that the point? ''Dean," Cass said, his voice equal parts warning and concerned.

"I need to defrost," he said, climbing to his feet. "Thanks for everything, Cass. Without you, we wouldn't have kicked his ass."

Cass's head was cocked to the side, and he was looking at him in that searching way that Dean didn't like at all. It was like he could see right through him like a flimsy negligee, and he surely could. "Dean, don't lose heart. We will stop the Apocalypse. We stopped the Hantu Raya. There's nothing that says two miracles can't happen."

This was probably his reassuring speech, and Dean appreciated it, even if it wasn't working. Dean tried to smile, knew he'd failed, and clapped Cass on the shoulder. "I'll remember that. Thanks for the help." He then retreated into the bathroom, closing the door and leaning against it until he was pretty sure he wasn't going to pull his gun out and press it under his chin. Wouldn't have worked anyways. He emptied the clip into the Raya.

Dean took as hot a shower as he could bear for as long as he could, and by the time the water started turning cool, he could feel his toes again. So count that in the win column? Why not? Take all the wins he could get. His stomach growled, but remarkably, he wasn't hungry. If he closed his eyes, he could still remember stone walls, and the smell of rust and blood. Man, he needed to get shitfaced. Did this town have a bar that was still open, and oh yeah, with a living staff? 'Cause he needed that right now.

When Dean came out, still drying his hair, he found a bottle of whiskey on the nightstand. He looked around, but Cass wasn't there. "Thanks," he said to the air, twisting off the cap and taking a couple of healthy swallows.

He had to remember to ask Cass for things more often.

* * *

The End


End file.
